geo

As the sole UI Designer in-house, geo (or Green Energy Options) entrusted me to lead the re-design of their entire portfolio of connected Internet of Things mobile apps.

While at geo, I introduced and championed a number of design tools, processes and best practices, including Sketch, Zeplin and Confluence. The full adoption of these tools in the business revolutionised the design work conducted at the company.

Three separate product-specific apps, and one combined unified app were designed, while working closely together with the UX designers and the app developers.

I also pioneered an dynamic UI element dubbed the "Organic Shape"; a moving metaball, where its shape, size, colour and velocity correspond with the user's current energy use. This gives the end user a quick feel of how much energy they're using at a glance. I also provided a reference implementation in OpenGL for the app developers to integrate.

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Moneyjar

Moneyjar is an online investing platform that makes investing into mutual funds accessible to the average person in India. While investing is generally seen as something only the relatively affluent can practice, Moneyjar makes it easy to invest with a few clicks; it offers a digital alternative to all the paperwork to get started, and users can begin investing with as little as 1,000 rupees (equivalent to about £11).

As a small startup in an emerging market, Moneyjar needed a design flair that other competitors in India did not enjoy. The unique selling proposition was to make investing easy to understand and do, and great design is a big part of it.

As Head of Design at Moneyjar, a bold and uncompromising look of stark purples and greens along with some unique typography was selected to give the platform the modern and fresh look it needed. Extensive UX research, prototyping, A/B testing, and analytics were used to ensure each UI was as easy to use as possible. Moneyjar was never afraid to throw away an entire interface if a better alternative was possible.

Moneyjar now manages the equivalent of over half a million pounds in user investments, with several new users signing up and investing each day.

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ORB

Thalus' newest AI product, ORB, required a strong branding and web presence to mark the launch of a new opportunity for online retailers on Shopify to display machine learning based product recommendations with the click of a button.

The product proposition centers around bringing machine learning and AI to "the masses", and making it an accessible and available concept for the average small eCommerce merchant to grasp and utilise. This required a look and feel that packages state-of-the-art artificial intelligence into a single simple to understand package.

An orb of slowly morphing strokes was adopted as the personification of the product, conceptually much in the style of Siri. A colour palette of pastel yellow and wine red was chosen, not only to complement the existing brand assets of the parent company, but also to set the product apart from competitors that tend to be mostly blue.

The ORB product will be launched on the Shopify Marketplace platform this year.

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NerdCubed

NerdCubed, a gaming YouTube channel with 2.5M subscribers, looked to improve the overall functionality and design of their website to coincide with the branding facelift.

Given the high amount traffic, combined with the image and video heavy content, a very lightweight solution was required. The solution was to create a Vue.js based single page application, eliminating the need for server round trips each time the user navigates the site.

Additionally, the application does all searching and filtering of content in-browser, further reducing the server load, and providing a more responsive experience to the user.

The new design of the site needed to work with the pre-existing re-designed logo, while still retaining the basic functionality of the previous site. Numerous small usability and UX improvements were made throughout, some enabled only by having rewritten the site in Vue.js from scratch.

Despite being a custom solution, the site administration still retains an easy and convenient way to update site content, without requiring a bulky CMS system.

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Barry Lewis / My Virgin Kitchen

My Virgin Kitchen, a cooking and lifestyle YouTube channel with 850K subscribers, was looking to upgrade their website along with their channel rebranding to Barry Lewis.

The new site had to be easy to update and capable of handling heavy traffic, while still introducing a number of new features; including a new search, more robust recipe presentation, an online store, and crucially, mobile optimisation.

A Wordpress-based solution was chosen, with a wholly custom theme and two custom plugins developed from scratch. To make it all work, the site must integrate with YouTube, PayPal, Disqus, Amazon and Google Ads.

The site catalogues all of the videos uploaded to the Barry Lewis channel, together with articles and additional metadata attached. Additionally, the site also hosts a podcast, an eCommerce solution, and a blog. Users may also submit their own recipes and blog posts.

A robust infrastructure had to be set up to provide a fast, stable and secure experience for each of the site's 1.2M monthly impressions.

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Workwell

Workwell, a French startup focused on employee wellness, productivity and management services through their Workwell app, required development of client specific services that would work with the pre-existing frameworks and design languages.

The Workwell app is a collection of web-based applications that all work off of a common JavaScript SDK, providing them common functionalities and data sources. Each service must integrate with the SDK, authenticate with and respond to uptime pings from the Workwell central server.

The services developed on request from Workwell ranged from a front-end JavaScript app displaying Workwell's built-in events on a traditional calendar grid view, to a Node.js microservice parsing and serving GTFS public transport data to provide real-time transit information to employees. The services went on to be used by their clients such as American Express, L'Oréal, Mirvac, and Aviva.

In the past, Workwell had also requested to develop their web properties, from the web version of their sister project Never Eat Alone, to the administration interface thereof, written in Vue.js.

Workwell and its services have been featured on TechCrunch, Forbes, CNBC, and The Wall Street Journal.

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