Background
A key strength of mine is adaptability to team needs, fostering a service-oriented mindset to support their goals. This was evident in my work with Gemio, where I assisted in developing their mobile app for an LED jewelry band, combining wearable tech and fashion. My primary role involved crafting the user experience for connecting friends through the app.
Process
I began by engaging with the team to understand the feature, including its technical constraints and scope, as well as the product's overarching vision. Subsequently, I conducted research into social components within similar apps and the implications of "friending" in those contexts.
From there, I created a storyboard that depicted a real-world scenario of how the Friending feature could be experienced.
After reviewing and adjusting the scenario with the team, I sketched up rough wireframes and built a click-through prototype in Invision. This lead to some great discussions and iterations on how to make friending as simple as possible for the user.
Based on the sketches, I built a mid-fi prototype using the same methods and got sign off from the team. Because of the small startup nature and short time frame I used the team as user-testers. It helped that they were very thorough and perceptive. I also started considering how the content would be responsive to different screen sizes.
Then I created a final design that sought to mesh with the existing app's look and feel.
Later I planned to do an over all re-design of the UI to match the branding goals for the product and to improve over all aesthetics and experience.
Unfortunately the company ran out of funding and was no longer able to develop the product further. Before things totally shut down, I took some time to start exploring "pie-in-the-sky" ideas for what a future version of the app might have look like because I really liked the projected and was hoping it would have gone somewhere.
Conclusion
I came in late to this product and gained experience learning about the team, what work they had done previously, and how I could add value to the product. I really enjoyed the chance to work on a project that combined software and hardware and would love the opportunity to do more of this in the future.