ran tao

One Concern is a super early-stage government tech startup that provides instant situational awareness after a natural disaster. They needed a full-stack designer to help them navigate through all aspects of design thinking and execution during their early days shaping the company brand and platform. Working directly with the CEO and CTO I led the design efforts on multiple product and design decisions including updating the public web presences to better address the professional and government industry, creating a fully-produced sales demo video, as well as iterating through and building out its enterprise mapping platform for Emergency Operation Centers.

Massdrop is a destination for enthusiasts to buy products and engage with their community. I was brought on as the sole designer as part of a project to help them figure out what is the optimal mobile experience they could offer their users. I conducted market research, competitive analysis, customer development, phone interviews, and user studies with paper prototypes and wireframes to tap into the core of what they can offer. I also provided recommendations and options for how they might move forward in the mobile experience.

Dakuto is a service where you can share and annotate code or any body of text. It was inspired by the success of RapGenius. I worked on this site with one other developer who was responsible for the back-end development while I did all the product design, interaction design, and and front-end development. The main goal of this was to provide a simple interface for people to collaborate, communicate, and learn without muddying up the original source. The clean interface was widely praised by those who used the service.

Sudo is a service that helps top engineering talent talk with potential co-workers at top tech companies. I was the sole designer and front-end developer along with a team of 2 back-end developers. We wanted to take a different approach to recruiting where there software developers could learn more about what it’s like to work at a company by chatting directly with developers currently at the company before initiating and committing to the formal interview process.

Over Coffee is a mobile app that is a kin to Tinder for Jobs. You can swipe through potential job openings and only get connected if there's a mutual match. I worked as the sole designer with 2 other developers. I designed the site as well as the mobile experience.

Get Experts is a platform for anyone to get real-time advice from any expert over live video. You can join live sessions with experts in any field or request a private session for 1:1 expert help. Each industry has it’s own expert community. I was the sole designer and worked directly with the CEO and two other developers.

A Type of Love was a site I built for a Valentine's day PR stunt selling handmade valentines day cards for Kahnoodle, a startup dedicated to helping couples keep that spark alive. We ended up with orders all around the world from people who wanted to send their loved one's something special.

Trifecta Blocks Challege is the first iOS game that I designed and built with Kris Fields. It has multiple options of gameplay and is most similar to a mix of Tetris and Bejeweled. It is so addictive that users reported playing non-stop for multiple hours trying to beat the high score. I was responsible for all the design, sound, animation, and front-end iOS development.

Sunscape is the very first iOS app that I built to hit the App Store. It is simply an app that shows the sunrise and sunset times for various locations you can set including your own current location. It has consistently received 20-60 downloads a day since it hit the App Store. It has reached Top 50 in the weather category for 15 countries. I was responsible for all aspects of this app from ideation to design to coding and deploying.

Raydar is an app aimed to help find the sunniest locations nearby for a day trip in the near future. I worked with one other product person on initial ideation and brainstorming but was responsible for the product design and interaction in its entirely.