Geo-Messaging Mobile App
2011
Information Architecture, Interaction Design, User Interface Design
Strategy and User Experience for a geo-messaging app across iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
This is one project I'm extremely proud of. Working with a Toronto start-up, the CEO wished to redefine the interaction of sharing your location with your friends. The goal of this application was to create a pivot - on one side you had your social interactions (messages, social feeds, etc...), and the other had your location and the ability to find and share places to meet and do things with your friends. Both sides would then be transparent to one another, facilitating the easy communication of conversations involving location.
The application had numerous innovations, one of my favorites was the notion of multi-search: the ability to search for a bar that's close to a parking lot that's also close to an ATM (ie. the adding of multiple search queries).
As Senior Information Architect, my responsibility was experience strategy and design, as well as managing the expectations of the internal team. I was extremely lucky to work with an exceptional group of individuals, however the senior team came from a pc software background - meaning they were new to the simplified and streamlined experience required by mobile apps. One of my greatest learnings in this project was around the simplification of a value proposition to its core - and the ability to communicate, educate, manage and negotiate these conversations with the senior leadership team. Difficult at times, the passion won out in concept.
Unfortunately this project never launched. With the introduction of Apple's iMessage and Find My Friends products, funding was pulled.
Strategy // Information Architecture // Interaction Design // HTML Prototype
This is one project I'm extremely proud of. Working with a Toronto start-up, the CEO wished to redefine the interaction of sharing your location with your friends. The goal of this application was to create a pivot - on one side you had your social interactions (messages, social feeds, etc...), and the other had your location and the ability to find and share places to meet and do things with your friends. Both sides would then be transparent to one another, facilitating the easy communication of conversations involving location.
The application had numerous innovations, one of my favorites was the notion of multi-search: the ability to search for a bar that's close to a parking lot that's also close to an ATM (ie. the adding of multiple search queries).
As Senior Information Architect, my responsibility was experience strategy and design, as well as managing the expectations of the internal team. I was extremely lucky to work with an exceptional group of individuals, however the senior team came from a pc software background - meaning they were new to the simplified and streamlined experience required by mobile apps. One of my greatest learnings in this project was around the simplification of a value proposition to its core - and the ability to communicate, educate, manage and negotiate these conversations with the senior leadership team. Difficult at times, the passion won out in concept.
Unfortunately this project never launched. With the introduction of Apple's iMessage and Find My Friends products, funding was pulled.
Strategy // Information Architecture // Interaction Design // HTML Prototype
- Geo-Messaging iPhone, Android & BlackBerry Apps
- Strategy and User Experience for a geo-messaging app across iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
This is one project I'm extremely proud of. Working with a Toronto start-up, the CEO wished to redefine the interaction of sharing your location with your friends. The goal of this application was to create a pivot - on one side you had your social interactions (messages, social feeds, etc...), and the other had your location and the ability to find and share places to meet and do things with your friends. Both sides would then be transparent to one another, facilitating the easy communication of conversations involving location.
The application had numerous innovations, one of my favorites was the notion of multi-search: the ability to search for a bar that's close to a parking lot that's also close to an ATM (ie. the adding of multiple search queries).
As Senior Information Architect, my responsibility was experience strategy and design, as well as managing the expectations of the internal team. I was extremely lucky to work with an exceptional group of individuals, however the senior team came from a pc software background - meaning they were new to the simplified and streamlined experience required by mobile apps. One of my greatest learnings in this project was around the simplification of a value proposition to its core - and the ability to communicate, educate, manage and negotiate these conversations with the senior leadership team. Difficult at times, the passion won out in concept.
Unfortunately this project never launched. With the introduction of Apple's iMessage and Find My Friends products, funding was pulled.Strategy // Information Architecture // Interaction Design // HTML Prototype 
iPhone Messaging // The two anchors of the experience were messaging and location. A pivot was created around the 'Map' button in the bottom navigation bar. Once pressed, the screen would show an animated rotation as it flipped to the other side. The messaging side of the application was the most ordinary part of the experience. Best practice was pulled from iMessage, as well as IM applications. A messaging experience is utilitarian and generic, and we didn't want to disrupt user expectations here. So we were consistent with what worked well.
iPhone Messaging > Share My Location // We created two ways to share your location. A ping is a one time share of your location. A pulse is a continual share of your location. To respect privacy, we built in time as well as geographical limits into the application. For example, you could say share my location while I'm within 10 miles of my office, or share my location for the next 3 hours. A shared location would be visible both in a conversation thread, as well as on the map.
iPhone Map > Tapping on a location in a conversation, or viewing the map, highlights where you are in relation to your friends. Being a social app, we built social profiles into the application. The goal was for these profiles to incorporate a user's location thread - where they've been, interspersed with their Facebook and Twitter feeds.
iPhone Multi-Search // One of my favorite interactions was this notion of multi search. When users search for a location, they are looking for more than one place. For example, you've got the 20-something who's looking for a bar, but he needs an ATM, and he doesn't want to walk too far from the subway station. That's a multi-search. Inspiring development made this possible. I raised the concern that the experience is a bit complex for smartphones, but we were implementing it as a proof of concept that would be further tested in beta.
Android Messaging // iOS, Android and BlackBerry are very different platforms. We had to retool the experience to work on each platform. Android is more similar to iOS than BlackBerry, but we had to accommodate for the various screen resolutions, the hard buttons, etc... This was my first time working with Android, and I loved the experience. I learnt so much about how Android worked - primarily the power and opportunity that the hard buttons provide, but this was tempered with a less clear navigation / experience structure. I regularly got lost in the Android experience. However I channeled this to try and make this experience as efficient as possible.
BlackBerry Messaging // The BlackBerry experience was by far the biggest departure from iOS and Android. I worked very closely with the development team in understanding the capabilities of the BlackBerry platform, since mapping on BlackBerry is far more limited than on iOS and Android. With development insight and support, we decided to focus the BlackBerry value proposition of sharing location through conversation, not a map based view. So the experience was built to be closer to that of BBM or Facebook, prioritizing messaging and social.
BlackBerry Torch Messaging // In addition to supporting keyboard based BlackBerries, I also designed the experience that it would scale easily to portrait, full touch based phones too.
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Strategy and User Experience for the Today's Parent website redesign.
Today's Parent is a magazine for Canadian parents, a target market I knew little about at the time - which is ironically why I asked to lead the UX for this project. Unable to make any assumptions on user behaviour, I relied heavily on research: interviews, user and competitive re to fuel the experience design.
Today's Parent's website touches the many facets of parenting:
- Articles on the age and stage of the child, lifestyle, activities, opinion
- Community based discussions, recipes and local content and events
- Tools including Baby Namer, Babyscopes, Due Date Calculator
This broad spectrum of content, and the 10 month project lifecycle required rapid iteration and prototyping to ensure the design and development teams were well briefed and could move forward efficiently.
You can visit the Today's Parent website at www.todaysparent.com.
Information Architecture // Interaction Design // Wireframes // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, User Interface Design, Interaction Design2011 -
First video and live streaming app in Canada.
To be first in market, we needed to move fast. UX was complete in 3 days. Yes - that's three days for an entire iPad app. That includes wireframes and an HTML prototype. Functional Requirements came afterwards.
The Citytv Video iPad App became #1 across the entire Canadian App Store.
Information Architecture (IA) // Interaction Design (IxD) // Wireframing // HTML Prototyping // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, Interaction Design, User Interface Design2011 -
Information architecture and html prototype for new Canadian Business mobile apps. We built for both iPhone and BlackBerry platforms.
The experience was designed from the ground up to support multiple content brands. The idea being that a news brand could take the structure of the app, restyle in their own brand colours and launch simply. Canadian Business and Macleans (also included in this portfolio) were our two go-to-market brands.
Information Architecture (IA) // Interaction Design (IxD) // Wireframing // HTML Prototyping // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, Interaction Design, User Interface Design2011 -
HSBC came to Rogers looking for a content partner to create a new content brand within the international business space. But the project became drastically larger - and continues to grow.
Brought on as a Digital Strategist, I refined the digital strategy to be the hub for all activities relating to the project, including conferences, events and research. I led and pitched a successful digital strategy including: comprehensive website with member only access to premium content (events, awards, stories); and innovative iPhone & Blackberry apps that scan a barcode on a nametag, which pulls up their Member Profile. The apps allow the User to message and add info straight to their address book.
Business Without Borders has been an incredible success - the project won an Innovation Award within Rogers Media. It's grown beyond Canada to be French Canada and US, and is expanding internationally.
Business Without Borders can be found online at www.bwob.ca.
Strategy // Pitch // Requirements Gathering // Information Architecture (IA) // Interaction Design (IxD) // Wireframing // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, Interaction Design, User Interface Design2011 -
Information architecture and html prototype development for new Macleans mobile apps. We built both iPhone and BlackBerry.
This Macleans mobile app was built in conjunction with the Canadian Business app, that you can also find in my portfolio. They were designed together to allow the creation of a platform that we could then bring more and more media brands on to. As such, there was a generic nature to the experience, allowing it to scale to many audiences, but there were also minor customizations based on the audience.
Information Architecture // Interaction Design // Wireframing // HTML Prototype // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, User Interface Design, Interaction Design2011 -
Provided UX oversight and input in the development of the CityNews iPhone and iPad Apps.
The CityNews apps were innovative in that they were the first Canadian News apps to display local news and UGC (Your Stories) tagged on a map. It was a new an innovative way to engage with news.
Consultation & support with: Information Architecture // Interaction Design // Wireframes // HTML Prototype // Functional Requirements // UAT // Test CasesInformation Architecture, User Interface Design, Interaction Design2011 -
Information architecture for the Canadian Business website redesign.
The Canadian Business website is a broad content site. It creates a large quantity of its' own content, but also pulls a considerable amount from the wires. The site needed to be able to accommodate this rapid velocity of wire content, as well as making it easy to find the more evergreen, longer articles.
The Canadian Business website was built on a custom CMS that placed a number of restrictions on the experience we were able to design and build. As such, we were involved with the development team from the beginning, and I found their insightful invaluable, both for this project, and future projects on other platforms, since I gained a much better understanding of the implications of UX downstream.
You can find Canadian Business online at canadianbusiness.com.
Information Architecture (IA) // Interaction Design (IxD) // Wireframing // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, Interaction Design, User Interface Design2011 -
Information architecture for the redesign of the MoneySense website.
MoneySense is a content website focussed on money matters, including saving, investing, real estate and retirement. Most of the content is evergreen, meaning that it doesn't change often. Given the priority placed on monthly repeat visitors and page views for ad impressions (and hence income), we worked to supplement the evergreen content with daily blogging and the notion of 'best of the web': roundups of useful money related links from other sites on the web.
MoneySense can be found at www.moneysense.ca.
Information Architecture (IA) // Interaction Design (IxD) // Wireframing // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, Interaction Design, User Interface Design2011 -
Creation of the Rogers Radio iPhone App allowing Users to listen to all of Rogers’ 50+ radio properties in one App. The User can browse stations in alphabetical order, by city or using the iPhone's GPS functionality, displaying stations 'near me' as well as a traditional keystroke search.
Each station has their own player within the app, and each can be skinned to suit the branding and visual style of the various stations. Depending on the station content, the User can view the 'Last 10' songs.
Information Architecture (IA) // Interaction Design (IxD) // Wireframing // HTML Prototyping // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, Interaction Design, User Interface Design2011 -
Requirements gathering, information architecture and html protoytpe for a web radio player.
This project might appear simple - it's a radio player - but it proved to be one of the most complex architecture projects I've worked on. Instead of just being a simple radio player, the goal here was to develop a richer experience. One where a user has the ability to listen to the station, view the recently played (including the ability to purchase each song), access the on-air schedule, send personalities messages, listen to podcasts and live chat.
On top of that, all this functionality had to be available within a pop-up window, be scalable to 50+ properties ranging from music, to news and sports, all with their own functional requirements.
This was a wonderful project of working within tight confines - both of the experience and the stakeholders. I will still admit that the experience is too complex - there is too much going on. Each screen was not simplified to its' core purpose.
You can view the player online by visiting www.chfi.com and clicking 'Listen Live' at the top of the right rail.
Requirements Gathering // Information Architecture (IA) // Interaction Design (IxD) // Wireframing // HTML Prototype // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, Interaction Design, User Interface Design2011 -
Redesign of the CGA Ontario website, including a variety of rich internet tools.
View CGA Ontario online at www.cga-ontario.org.
Information Architecture (IA) // Interaction Design (IxD) // Wireframing // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, Interaction Design, User Interface Design2011 -
The Citytv Royal Wedding Microsite was a joint effort at Rogers Digital Media. It brought together content from a variety of different magazines (Chatelaine, Flare), broadcast (Citytv, CityNews) and radio stations (680News).
Timelines for the microsite were extremely short - less than a week from conception to launch. The team - experience, design, copy and development - worked exceptionally well together to create the Royal Wedding Microsite within the timeline given.
Find the Royal Wedding microsite online at royalwedding.citytv.com.
Information Architecture // Interaction Design // Wireframes // Functional RequirementsInformation Architecture, Interaction Design, User Interface Design2011
