A rewrite of the existing client that was deemed “inadequate” by the CEO. I was in charge of the project, managing design and development resources as well as product direction. The codebase was thoughtfully designed in order to be easily maintainable in the future. The project was completed in six months.
The specification was to innovate on Android, but still to represent the core tenants of TweetDeck. I worked closely with our user experience dude producing builds every few days that we submitted for immediate feedback from real users. Keeping the product direction in mind while constantly seeking new directions in which to innovate ultimately transformed our vision into a 2010 Webby nominated powerhouse of a Twitter client, now only second in popularity to Twitter’s own Android effort.
A free-time project, Homebrew has become the most forked project on GitHub, having seen seen rapid and enthusiastic take up by the Mac and web development communities.
Homebrew has been successful because I identified a niche and spent months designing a compelling and simple solution that very effectively addressed the needs of the problems I was trying to solve.
I led the development of all Last.fm’s desktop (Windows, Mac and Linux) and mobile (iPhone, Android and Blackberry) apps. Our team of three developed rapidly, with frequent review cycles and close co-operation with the design and user experience teams. The Last.fm desktop software had a userbase of 4-5 million with 600,000 downloads a month. Successful distribution and auto-updates for such a large base required deep knowledge of potential problems on all platforms as well as an iron-gut.
Considered by many as the best music player on Linux, I joined the project at its inception, and was part of an eventual team of three core developers who took Amarok from obscurity to immense popularity in just two years. At my heart I am a product designer, and I took great pleasure in shaping Amarok into a peerless music experience.
I work until it’s done and am not happy unless it is just right.