Nottingham Hack24 is an annual student hackathon organised by Tech Nottingham and focuses on tech innovation, coding, and collaboration.

The event is typically a 24-25 hour overnight hackathon open to students. encouraging projects in software, hardware, games, websites, and more, with no prior experience required.

Whilst working at UNiDAYS our team decided to partake in the event, I was the interface designer of the project.

Teams received bonus points for using Esendex products.

We used the ‘Esendex Multi-channel API’. This allowed users to interact with each other using their mobile phones.

When paired with the mapping API, this allowed the team to create a virtual game of ‘tag’ that could be used with friends across the city.

The aim of the game is simple; Chase and Tag your friends around your area. You get allocated a team; Zombies or Humans. As soon as there are no more players for one team left, then the game restarts.

There are ‘Power’, ‘Safe’ and ‘Dead’ zones where you can call out to your friends to help each team to take advantage and swing the pendulum of your side to win the game.

You tag a friend by tapping your phone on the other players device, making sure NFC (Near Field Communication) is active.

These are the status indicators showing the number of players currently on each team. As players swap between groups; the Humans or Zombies counters change.

No game is complete without relevant notifications explaining the situation of yourself and friends within your area.

The challenge was to create a native iOS and Android application to replace the current dynamic website that was being used.

The outcome had to use the latest native UX best practices and expected user behavioural patterns as to not alienate users. As well as this, the app needed to be as lean as possible.

UNiDAYS are the world’s leading student network, with access to over 10+ million students worldwide.

Providing multi-channel campaigns and solutions to help reach students – the highest value consumer group of all time.

When the app opens, I created a loading animation. This allowed time for the app content to load all the Perks within the homepage. The iD was highlighted in the beginning to represent Student ID.

As well as the animation, I created a few introduction screens that explained the benefits of joining and having a UNiDAYS account.

Upon logging in, users are taken to the homepage. This is where the main brands pay for exposure, as well as limited-time offers.

Perks were in groups of type, so users could swipe between the pages to see the other areas.

This area was one of the main differences in native UX between Android and iOS. Android interface uses swiping and the Hamburger navigation to get between pages, whereas the iOS interface uses main sections along the bottom navigation.

Searching within the Android app was done by hitting the floating action button at the bottom right of the screen. Doing this opened up a new page where it showed previous search results.

Searching within the Android app was done by hitting the floating action button at the bottom right of the screen. Doing this opened up a new page where it showed previous search results.

See Tickets are a major ticketing platform for events, concerts, and festivals. They have undergone several updates to its mobile site and related apps, focusing on improving user experience, scalability, and functionality.

By researching, and through personal experiences, people use their phones more during the day, during commutes, and on lunch breaks. It isn’t always easy to have a computer to hand to book concert tickets.

I worked on the recreation of their new mobile website design to help achieve this goal.

It made sense to create a smooth experience to book through and store users information to their account on. So the next time users wanted to buy tickets, it would be easy enough to do so in no more than four clicks.

When a user first enters the site, they get asked if the site could use the phone’s location. This helped keep events relevant to the location of the user. You could also use the search bar to search for events within a specific city or area.

(Android – iPhone – Windows)

We gave users the ability to browse the website regardless of creating an account or not. However, when the time came to buy tickets, users would be required to Login or Sign Up.

Creating an account allowed users to ‘like’ and ‘follow’ events of their choice. Users could also save their details to speed up the checkout process when ordering tickets. As this is time-sensitive, the whole process a lot simpler and easier to complete.

The homescreen was designed into different sections to allow users to filter and easily search. Users could search for a date range, location or event type.

Changing these filters updated the results on the homepage.

The homescreen showed infinite amount of events with the ability to add individual events as your ‘favourite’. Adding a favourite event allowed users to navigate back quickly to that event at a later date.

When a user adds an event to their favourties, it gives the user the option to receive notifications announcing when tickets went on sale or if ticket allocation was running low.

To help users narrow down their search results, we added the ability to search a specific date range, events happening on that day, the following day, or coming up at the weekend.

As well as this, we used geo-location to bring in all the events happening within a set radius of the phone’s location.

Finally, if the user had a favourite genre of music or festival, then they could favourite multiple artists – these would be remembered and filtered for the user on the homepage.

Operating in two key sectors; Office and Education. I worked on the company rebrand and structure of their products, and branding identity to create a simple to understand and instantly recognisable format for customers.

Application icon

Icon design

The icons that ran through the app were simple, yet detailed. Each icon had three corporate colours; this helped give the app a modern facelift.

Remote Manager is a seamless and innovative blend of online safety, network admin and classroom management software.

Imagery

It works in conjunction with the Education Pro, Workplace Pro and YouID software.

In doing so, we created a fresher and brighter identity that connects with Impero’s customers and creates a clear vision that flows through all products and sub-brand.

The last thing to get rebranded was the website. During the test phase of development, the site got A/B tested so that we could choose which website layout to use once the official site went live.

The website uses the location of the user. So when a user is in a different region, it loads up that specific regional webpage.

Each region has it’s own tailored visual elements that run throughout the pages.

A/B testing is a method used on many sites to find out how well a design is influencing users’ engagement, particularly in regards to a specific call-to-action.

When users arrive at the site, they are shown one version of the design at random, and overtime statistics are measured to see which design gave the best results. Once a winner is determined, it becomes the design for all visitors.

Ikanos Consulting are a software house founded in 2007 in Nottingham. It specialises in creating applications for wearable technology, including the LifeBoard software for Kopin Corporation’s Golden-i headset computer.

I worked on the creation and designs of multiple services for Ikanos, including Paramedic Pro, Police Pro and Firefighter Pro, as well as LifeBoard.

LifeBoard enables users to customise up to 6 different screens to meet their working preferences. Simply by talking to the Golden-i headset allows users to manage their day with ease by showing you your calendar along with the latest news along with the ability to access files, and documents, watch videos and browse the web.

(Gi-OS for short)

The Gi-OS had to be simple, it was going to be part of something incredibly complicated, so it needed to be easy for the user to use and relate too.