PROJECTS
Summary details of a selection of projects I'm able to show
Event Streaming and API services
The client was an internal business unit within Volkswagen sales who engaged the services of VWDS to build a number of applications to help improve the car buying process and experience. This app was one component of that initiative.
The problem was a number of new internal and public facing applications needed to receive more reliable, scalable and real time car tracking data - from manufacturing production, transportation through to dealership.
Solution was a push notification service (and standard REST API) app. I led ideation, launch and roll out of the event streaming and API service helping to improve efficiency, engagement and reliability in data served to an integrated internal onboarding / CRM app and external public facing vehicle tracking website.
Successes included the app serving car build and delivery stats data to a car buyer enrollment app in over 20 countries within the first year of release, with adoption interest from Audi.
Challenges were dealing with stakeholders from various internal business units and aligning and integrating with other internal systems, each with their own development roadmaps.
Technologies
- Go, Kotlin
- AWS S3, SNS, SQS
- Concourse CI
- GitHub, Swagger.io
- Pivotal Tracker
Mobile ride-share app
The problem was a city council wanted to help alleviate traffic congestion, safety and environmental impact by reducing cars on the road at peak times through a niche (very market specific) ride share scheme.
The solution: as part of an external technology product team who the council partnered with I co-led product team through an extensive discovery initiative to assess the opportunity and validate its feasibility. Discovery included market and competitor analysis, surveys, onsite observations, multiple user and subject matter one-to-one interviews, prototyping and mock experiments.
Successes: we identified that the intended goals were very unlikely to be realised, that pre-project hypothesis and core assumptions were largely incorrect and that there was a high likelihood the project would receive low adoption, be high risk and would not achieve the intended impact - not least due to density of potential users / drivers per geographical area.
Outcome: advised client to halt project - thus further spending was saved and the learnings could be helpful for exploring and testing other ride-share models in the future.
Screenshots
Sensor connected responsive web app
Summary: the app reduced the amount of time building workers on high-rise construction sites waited for a hoist elevator, reducing idle wait time (and lost productivity) by 5 to 10%.
The problem was idle time waiting for high-rise construction elevators in NYC was costing building projects (on large 70 floor plus buildings) over 10 million a year, or 97$ per worker, per day, in lost productivity.
Solutions: We tested many technical solutions to enable the ability to determine where the hoist elevator was, settling finally on a limit switch with accelerometer, together with cellular IoT to cloud databases and responsive web and mobile view for the application.
Successes: delivering the app not only brought about a cost / time saving benefit but also improved morale on the construction force and brought recognition and praise to the internal project team involved with the project.
Link to production web app log in
Screenshots
Foodhub market place app
The problem was there was no structured marketplace in BC, Canada for food buyers and sellers (small producers) around food distribution, building relationships and doing business together
Client vision: online subscription based marketplace solving pain points of buyers and sellers (food producers) who want to connect, cultivate relationships and do business directly with one another.
The solution: together with a designer created brand, overall UX and 80% market place app UI designs and delivered a multipage front-end clickable prototype for testing purposes.
Successes: I provided client rapid product strategy and discovery, user research scripts and protocol, scoped project and provided proposal from ideation up to a built minimum product operational to start business. Led design and development team to build out designs and prototypes in a number of weeks. Saved client considerable further expenses by using the prototype, user interviews and experiments to help indicate business model was not likely feasible due to operational / distribution and other market issues at that time - for the size investment and scale of business he wanted.
Outcome: the project was shelved so further frontend work was haleted and backend work was not started.
Link to prototype
Screenshots
New website + automated fulfilment
The client, ColcaSac Inc. was a Salt Lake City-based company, started in 2004 as AppleSac, that specializes in the making of sleeves specifically for small-format computers and phones.
The problem was business owner wanted to implement new technology for the brand (which produced and sold Apple device sleeves), including new website, new payment gateway with integrated and automated fulfilment services - and operationally to incorporate a new after-sales services team and to move production, packaging and fulfilment to a new country.
Solutions I implemented on the technology side was to source and put together a distributed product team (UX/UI designer, developers, marketer and paid ads professional, product photographer, new product designer and customer services staff team) so that we could build, integrate and operate the new website and services.
Solutions I implemented on the business operational side was to meet and setup relations and orders with new production and packaging factories, researched and selected a fulfilment centre (and developed an automated fulfilment via API from website), sourced and worked with new product designer to extend current product range and implemented Freshdesk customer service platform for support and returns management.
Failures and lessons learned were around the packaging design and packaging materials chosen for the physical product being produced and sold, which significantly increased the costs of packaging production, fulfilment storage, shipping and increased damages during shipping. A major challenge was also that this was a time limited role and project that had to be completed within 12 to 14 months.
Successes: website switch went seamlessly with a continued increase in sales (helped by using paid marketing/ads professionals and split testing website components and sales funnel) and a massive reduction in customer service response time (500% reduction in due to setting up 24 hour live agent customer service), a drop in total production costs (39%) and a reduction in order to shipment time to 1 day av. (from 3 days).
Screenshots
New wesbite + Gravity forms
The problem was business owner wanted to improve website lead generation conversions for his business that was already a well established brand and business.
The solution was to work with existing distributed team to build new website and redesign the Gravity lead forms and split test performance using VWO optimizer and other tools to ensure improvements.
Successes included building and migrating a new website and forms with improved UX / UI and that converted 11% better than the old site.
Screenshots