Application Design
I participated in an app design course during the pandemic while at Ithaca College. Below are two samples of my work.
The first, is a result of our professor breaking the class up into teams of three and instructed each team to develop an application for “Liquid State”, a micro brewery located in Ithaca, NY which allowed their patrons to either order directly from their phones using the Liquid State website or in person. However, using a website on a phone is not always efficient. The app is designed to order micro brews in store. My contribution was to prototype the application and upload the photos. Using Adobe XD, we each collaborated to make the prototype function (see further below) by participating in regular Zoom meetings and worked to have the app come as close as possible to the company website using their graphics, fonts and colors.
The second, is Trader Joe’s. The company does not have an application. This was a project I worked on alone to highlight the negative aspects that Covid brought to grocery shopping. While most food stores were working on their own solutions to online shopping, TJ’s did not have an organized or efficient way of doing so. The stores would only allow 25% of the stores patron capactiy in at a time. Therefore, this caused me and all Trader Joe’s customers to have to wait outside for long periods of time in the bitter cold that winter. While TJ’s is known for its excellent working conditions, I felt that this was not their finest hour with both employees and customers standing in the extreme temperatures. A better alternative would have been to come up with a system where people could wait their turn in their cars which is what my app does, among other things. Here again, I used Adobe XD and the company’s website to develop an app that allows for online shopping, has a Virtual Line Holder function (so the customer can wait their turn in their car), and includes all important features of the corporate website, i.e. links to the Frequent Flyer, directions, store hours, podcasts, recipes etc. There were time constraints on this project; but, had I had the time, I would have elaborated on the Virtual Line Holder aspect of the app. My plan was to create a parking lot feature for when a customer pulls into the lot, TJ would then receive an alert letting them know he/she is nearby. The customer would then receive a friendly reminder letting them know when they can enter the store, as well as, being advised of the maximum time the individual will be allowed to collect their desired purchases. This would have allowed their patrons to wait in their warm cars instead of standing in a cold line for as long as an hour or more.
