📱12 Things We Designed In 2016 🎄
Hi there, this is Boris. I run the Berlin Studio of UI Design Firm Goodpatch. 2016 has been a very exciting and productive year for our team. We have worked on so many different products, moved to a beautiful new office, and hired 7(!) new members to join our team. For me the Christmas Holidays are a great time to pause for a moment and look back at what we accomplished. In this post I want to share some of the things we are proud to have worked on this year.
1. Mimi Music for Android
While we have worked with Mimi in the past, bringing the Music Player to Android presented us with quite a challenge, particularly from the dev team’s perspective. Ensuring superior sound quality was a far greater feat on Android compared to iOS, due to the fact that buffer sizes and sampling rates differ on almost all Android devices. After many months of refinements you can now become a beta tester and download it on the Google Play Store.
2. Zenjob
Zenjob reached out to us back in early 2016 and we helped to bring speed to their product development, while shaping the product direction and brand. It was particularly fun to be involved from the very beginning of the project. Together we launched the first version of the Job App on Android and then on iOS. Today we are still working together on UI design and iOS development and the partnership has been very inspiring on both sides. It’s been impressive to see how much the company has grown in just one year.
3. Vimeda
With Vimeda, we developed the first version of a dashboard that shows the personal bio marker results from a user’s mail-in blood test. Based on the results, you can learn more about your health and specifically what you should be eating to improve it. Medical lifestyle products, like Vimeda and Mimi, give people the power to understand their own body better.
4. Teambay
Teambay is designed to improve employee satisfaction, productivity, and happiness at work. Employees answer one simple work-related question, once a week, with the chance to leave additional feedback. Thanks to this system, management gets an actionable report on a weekly basis for ongoing improvements. As a growing organization here at Goodpatch, we found this tool to be extremely relevant to our own needs. We focused on the UI design for the employee-facing side of the web app. Our goal was to make every person look forward to submitting their answer each week.
5. Labfolder
Note taking inside a lab is critical, but penmanship is not a controlled variable. Messy handwriting can result in illegible notes. Labfolder believes all notes should exist digitally, making it easier to share learnings with fellow researchers. We helped to take the experience to mobile and went all in with a fun UI that focuses on taking snapshots. And this is just the start.
6. McDonald’s App
Above examples highlighted some of our startup products. But from time to time, we also get to work with much bigger companies — in this case, McDonald’s. We helped McDonald’s Japan to redesign their app for iOS and Android. The app is number #1 in the Food category of the Japanese app store. It was a great experience and a contrast to working with startups.
7. Weka
When the B2B special-interest publisher Weka reached out to Goodpatch about a year ago, it quickly became clear to us that this could be a very interesting challenge. Old meets new economy. Weka, a company located in remote countryside about an hour from Munich, has built a legacy business around “Loseblattwerke”. What started as a redesign of a website became a big step towards digitalization of the business model and a challenging software project. We are looking forward to continue working together with this amazing team.
8. Balto
As you might know, next to our agency business, Goodpatch also builds its own products. Our first product was prototyping tool Prott. Now we are about to launch our second product called Balto. Balto is a feedback tool which brings fun to the process of QAing. A designer can create dev tickets by simply taking screenshots and screen videos on mobile. Like with Prott, we built this around our own needs as a design firm first. Big shout out to the Balto team in Tokyo✌️.
9. Product Crunch
What started as a meetup group has grown to a community of over 1,500 designers and product people here in Berlin. Earlier this year, we renamed “Designing Mobile Interfaces” into Product Crunch in order to make it even bigger and better. The concept is now a monthly event series where we make an effort to learn from and get a deeper understanding of each other’s work. Each event follows a certain theme. So far we’ve had: Sound, Change, and Love. Next up: Learn. Be sure to join us on January 31, 2017.
10. Our new office
Being in digital, we don’t get to work physically with our hands as much as we would like. Building our new office space has been a welcomed change and it was so fulfilling to be hands-on involved in everything. From finding the location, to interior planning, picking furniture and materials, and doing the actual construction. Big thanks to the wonderful team at Prinztrager who helped us to make our ideas into reality.
More impressions can be found here. You are also invited to pay us a visit sometime. Have a coffee, beer, or simply a chat with us.
11. New Goodpatch Berlin Website
As Designers we want our work to speak for us. Putting up a simple portfolio subpage to show our Berlin-based design work has been a very lean and fun project. Head over to berlin.goodpatch.com and find the easter egg.
12. Christmas Special: Berlin Sticker Set for iOS
You love Berlin the same way we do? Then we might have something for you. We are paying homage to this city and its creative energy with this iOS Sticker set. Featuring iconic things of Berlin’s everyday life. #weilwirdichlieben
Now available on the App Store.
đź’™ Big thanks to the whole Goodpatch Family and all of our dear clients! Your success is our success.
Follow our journey and connect on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Regarding design & dev projects, we are always interested in meeting new exciting companies. We are also never not hiring. Drop us a mail at berlin@goodpatch.com
🎄 Enjoy the holidays, and see you in 2017!
