Summary
A customer came to us in order to present his innovative idea to a R&D contest about tourism and leisure time. He had in mind a revolutionary idea, bring the “smart” concept (of smart city) to the beach. Since it was a freelancer job, I quickly seek my most trustworthy designer Adrià Pérez Pla, to help me deliver a cutting-edge prototype to unveil the potencial behind our customer’s idea.
My work includes, creation of the final prorotype to be presented to the contest, strong influence on interaction design as well as on the visual language used throughout the project.
Check the final project on Behance
The project
Our client was an experienced services and equipment provider for beaches all over the world. He wanted to present a prototype to a contest that was going to be held 2 months later. So we had to start right away. We met several times in the begining, to properly define the functionalities of an MVP that would correctly express the value proposition. The product needed it’s own corporate image that had to be aligned with the rest of the brands our client was already holding.
As an added requisite, we had to add geolocated services. We clearly state in every step that what we were building, was just a prototype, not a full fledged product. A first iteration ready to start working on it.
Sketches
Coding & design
Back then in Dec. 2013, there were no Material Design guidelines. We started to work with the (already old by then) Holo guidelines. Nevertheless as avid observers, we detected a new pattern being tested on the Google Now app. A new and interesting way of group together contextually-relevant information. We didn’t know by then, but this pattern is now known as “cards” and it’s commonly used, since Material Design release on June 2014.
A comparison between Google Now cards by Nov. 2013, the cards we implemented in Smartbeaches Nov. 2013 and the cards revealed in Google I/O Jun. 2014.
The product
We were able to complete the task within time so the prototype was ready for presentation. Picture of our client holding a slideshow of his idea in the event.
The result
Lessons learnt
Looking at what others do is useful, no need to copycat everything. But when something makes sense and solves the problem you are facing, it’s the best solution for everyone, including the user, «specially» the user.
Correctly define what will be built is the best way to keep a costumer “under control”. We all need to be flexible enough to accept the requests that put us out of our comfort zone as well as humble to say “enough” when we’re reaching our limits.
The team
Developed at Reo Developer, Tarragona.
- UX Designer – Adrià Pérez Pla
- Android Developer – Eloi Navarro Serrano