Modern and considered web design. Including development & hosting with best-in-business web platforms.
Full service user experience & interface design. From research and strategy to high fidelity prototypes
Brand analysis and new brand creation & strategy. Comprehensive packages to transform your business image.
Take your social marketing to the next level with interactive Augmented Reality effects for Instagram, Facebook & Snapchat.
Branding
Website
UX/UI
Augmented Reality
UX/UI
Website
Branding
Website
UX/UI
Augmented Reality
Art Direction
UX
Branding
Creative Direction
Animation
Year:
2019
Field:
Branding
UX
UI
Client:
Tradable Bits
Tradable Bits is a market leading all-in-one CRM platform for marketing analysis, fan engagement & advertising in the Sports and Music industry. Created in 2008, it had seen innovation and ambition lead it to a powerful and comprehensive suite of tools which was ready for it's next stage in User Experience. I came onboard as the primary designer responsible for an overhaul from Brand Identity to User Research and everything in-between
UI Showcase
The Problem
Rapid development of complex proprietary tools had led to a powerful platform, at the expense of a refined user experience. It was time to audit the existing tools, and apply the UX principles which are often (understandably) overlooked in fast paced start-ups.
Business & Design Goals
Modernise
The tools were there, the functionality to radically improve clients' results had been identified and built, but the brand identity didn't reflect a top of its class product. The branding needed to match a high quality product, and reassure potential clients that it was the real deal
Revamp
As with the rebranding, a full UX & UI overhaul was needed to accompany and emphasise these sentiments. A frictionless and intuitive experience was required to reach the levels of mass adoption the sales team were striving for.
Challenges
Inconsistency
At this point there was no design system; no defined text styles, different icon styles, button styles etc. Page layouts were often in different formats for similar tools.
While each separate section could function independently, it lacked the cohesiveness of a complete product.
Complexity
Many parts of the platform were difficult to interpret and utilise. A double-header style nav method made it common for users become confused when navigating. There was little to no help text or usability prompts to help users decipher a tools purpose and functionality without personal training. This amount of complexity is a barrier to client adoption and a pleasant user experience.
An example of the discrepancies in button styling
Branding
A brand refresh was identified as the initial step in the process. This would be completed quicker than the UX work needed on the product, and would allow the sales team to start working with new marketing collateral and ad campaigns sooner.
The previous branding was showing signs of age and didn't represent the cutting edge tech company Tradable Bits had established itself as. There was almost no guidance or direction on the new branding, just one stipulation; the logo had to incorporate a reference to the the Giant Pacific Octopus. This was chosen by the founders as it represents the same values they saw in their company - adaptable, intelligent, multi-talented, with it's home in the Pacific North West.
After upwards of 100 different logotypes being produced and iterated upon. The following brand identity was settled upon..
UI Refresh
To begin the UI overhaul, I first conducted a review of the platform and analysed areas for improvement. I identified standard elements which needed to be consistently used throughout the platform. This, combined with text styles and standard colours led to a robust design system which could be used to transform the existing product. I found that there were many superfluous containers, borders, and shades of grey in use. This led to a messy and unclear experience for the user, examples of this can be seen below.
Examples of the old user interface before improvements.
The following assets were used in the creation of a new design system for the platform. Colours were aligned with the new brand identity to form a cohesive experience. A bespoke icon collection was also created featuring 120+ unique icons..
Once these elements had been defined and completed, the process of applying them to the existing interface could begin.
UX Improvements
At this point the UI updates had greatly improved the primary identified challenge of inconsistency, next up was to tackle the issue of complexity. The most pressing UX issue was the navigation; a complete overhaul was needed and after conducting research with key clients, I decided a sidebar implementation was the best option. This offered the user some key benefits:
1. We could remove a significant piece of content from the main section of the screen, allowing the user to compartmentalise the content they were ingesting. This mitigated the overwhelmed feeling which was reported by many users.
2. The sidebar layout allowed us to efficiently display the current page, and all other relevant pages/sub-pages. Before there was often confusion as to the user's current location on the platform and this made it very difficult to navigate and led to a poor feeling of confidence from the user.
The most complex tool on the platform was an automated ad creation interface, which allows the user to create and launch advertising campaigns on multiple social platforms at scale. A key improvement in reducing the complexity was the introduction of collapsible parent-child elements. This established a strong hierarchy and allowed the user to comprehend the tool much more easily.
before and after of the new organisation layout.
Key Takeaways
In roughly a year of work, a complete UX & UI overhaul was planned and executed which allowed for a vastly more comprehensible and useful suite of tools. This paved the way for increased customer retention & satisfaction, and a more confident & empowered sales team. The new product helped attract some of the biggest sports & entertainment names in the world who remain engaged, enthusiastic enterprise clients.
Ready to kickstart your project?
Click below to start making the dream into reality.
Year:
2019
Field:
AR
UX/UI
Website
Client:
Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza Music Festival Chicago commissioned an interactive fan engagement solution. I created an Augmented Reality experience comprising of an LED tower screen in the festival grounds and a real-time camera feed. Additionally, a microsite was created for fans to review download and share their snaps!
Project Overview
Lollapalooza is an iconic music festival seeing the worlds best artists play for 400,000+ fans over four days in the centre of Chicago. The production team requested a live activation which fans could engage with throughout the weekend. A tower of LED panels was used to create a live photo booth interaction with augmented reality effects.
Featured on:
The Problem
Lollapalooza has a huge international reputation, and often sees a high percentage of repeat attendees. The challenge they face each year is to bring new, fun & engaging attractions for the fans to interact with outside of the live performances.
Business & Design Goals
Engage
Create an interactive experience which would engage fans and give them a fun, memorable interaction. Fans should stop and be willing to wait in line to interact.
Innovate
Keep Lollapalooza at the forefront of fan engagement with new technologies such as Augmented Reality. Deliver an experience that fans won't have seen before.
Challenges
Originality
As mentioned before, there are a lot of return attendees for this festival, with a primarily young demographic. The solution had to be novel and original to impress and engage these fans.
Augmented Reality Build
Once augmented reality had been decided upon as the engagement feature, I used Spark AR™ for development. This is the AR software built by Facebook for use in Instagram and Facebook camera.
This development platform gave Lollapalooza the option to publish the effect to these apps for fans all over the world to use. This engagement was sold to an eyewear sponsor for the event, so naturally the ideation process was based around glasses. A multi-face effect with different festival style sunglasses got the green light from the festival and sponsors, and I added a frame with eyes that follow the user around to give the LED tower a bit of personality.
The completed build featuring 4 face trackers and frame animation.
Photo Microsite
An additional layer of interactivity was built into this effect. The tower captures photos when the fan holds a smile for 3 seconds, and uploads it to a microsite. A code displays on screen for the fan to retrieve their snap which they can download and share as they please.
Fans after taking their automated picture.
The microsite was built to match the brand style used on the photo booth in order to provide a cohesive experience. This was a mobile-first design but it was crucial that it would function equally well on desktop for fans who wanted to access their photos this way when they returned home after the event.It was inevitable that the festival goers would sometimes forget their code or miss it on screen as they were caught up in the festival atmosphere. Therefore, I introduced an option to search via day and time period rather than by code. There was also a report option that a fan could use to flag an image for moderators to remove.
Photo Booth gallery microsite
Key Takeaways
Augmented reality is a huge opportunity for standing out from the crowd and can result in massive engagement numbers. Over the four days of the festival, there were lines ~80% of the time, and over 8,000 photos taken.
Ready to kickstart your project?
Click below to start making the dream into reality.
Year:
2020
Field:
Branding
Website
UX/UI
Client:
What's Kraken
Industry news and insights platform for Sports, Music & Entertainment. Completed the full development of the project including brand creation, web and mobile interfaces & marketing assets.
Project Overview
What's Kraken is an industry news and insights platform for Sports, Music & Entertainment. I did the full development of the project including brand creation, web & mobile interface design and marketing assets.
The Problem
Through their work in market analysis and advertising, the client had amassed many valuable insights and knew the state of the industry inside and out; an outlet was needed to share this knowledge and bring more attention to the business.
Business & Design Goals
Showcase
It was important to show off the depth of knowledge and key insights in order to further establish the title of "Industry Expert". This would lead to a more trusted and reliable corporate personality.
Distill
A lot of the competition in this space engage in heavy content pushing strategies and overload their outlets. The goal was to share distilled, concise information, and the design was to be minimal in order to mirror that sentiment.
Challenges
Independent Brand
There had to be a new brand implemented into this website so as to provide some differentiation from the parent brand and its blog. The new brand had to reference the same design language, but at the same time have it's own identity.
Branding
The brand name chosen by the client was "What's Kraken?", a play on the term which referenced the octopus theme used for the parent brand. The goal for the identity was to make it engaging, bold and dynamic.
The Final brand identity presentation
Web Design
Throughout the web design process the main thing kept in mind was to remain minimal while also providing sufficient content to function as a news interface. In keeping with current trends a dark mode was chosen for the UI, with soft tones and shadows. The navigation was divided into articles and video content.
Web design mockups
Ready to kickstart your project?
Click below to start making the dream into reality.
Year:
2021
Field:
Augmented Reality
Art Direction
UX
Variety of custom augmented reality effects implemented on Instagram & Facebook and also at live events. A modern and memorable fan experience for your brand, contact now for more info.
AR Overview
Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the real world is enhanced by computer-generated objects. Social media apps have brought AR to the masses in fun and accessible ways. This area has huge potential for engagement and can really help elevate your brand or event to the next level.
AR Effect Types
Face Trackers
These effects track up to 4 users faces at a time, with endless possibilities for creativity; face paint, head gear, glasses, masks, jewelry, colour changes, background face deformation to name a few. I can integrate these effects with your branding, games, audio and more to create a truly unique and engaging experience.
Target Trackers
This type of effect uses a real world object as a trigger. This could be a logo, poster, wall mural, album cover - you name it. When the camera finds the target it can trigger an animation, a song, a 3D map, again the possibilities are huge.
Key Takeaways
An innovative engagement tool to empower your brands social presence, AR should be a go-to for your social marketing strategy. Previously achieved figures of ~300k Impressions in 3 days show just how effective this can be!
Here Are Some Teams We Have Created Custom AR Effects For, Get In Touch Today To Join Them!
Ready to kickstart your project?
Click below to start making the dream into reality.
Year:
2020
Field:
Branding
Creative Direction
Animation
Client:
Helias Olis
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Aliquam id.
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Year:
2019
Field:
Branding
UX
UI
Client:
Tradable Bits
Tradable Bits is a market leading all-in-one CRM platform for marketing analysis, fan engagement & advertising in the Sports and Music industry. Created in 2008, it had seen innovation and ambition lead it to a powerful and comprehensive suite of tools which was ready for it's next stage in User Experience. I came onboard as the primary designer responsible for an overhaul from Brand Identity to User Research and everything in-between
UI Showcase
The Problem
Rapid development of complex proprietary tools had led to a powerful platform, at the expense of a refined user experience. It was time to audit the existing tools, and apply the UX principles which are often (understandably) overlooked in fast paced start-ups.
Business & Design Goals
Modernise
The tools were there, the functionality to radically improve clients' results had been identified and built, but the brand identity didn't reflect a top of its class product. The branding needed to match a high quality product, and reassure potential clients that it was the real deal
Revamp
As with the rebranding, a full UX & UI overhaul was needed to accompany and emphasise these sentiments. A frictionless and intuitive experience was required to reach the levels of mass adoption the sales team were striving for.
Challenges
Inconsistency
At this point there was no design system; no defined text styles, different icon styles, button styles etc. Page layouts were often in different formats for similar tools.
While each separate section could function independently, it lacked the cohesiveness of a complete product.
Complexity
Many parts of the platform were difficult to interpret and utilise. A double-header style nav method made it common for users become confused when navigating. There was little to no help text or usability prompts to help users decipher a tools purpose and functionality without personal training. This amount of complexity is a barrier to client adoption and a pleasant user experience.
An example of the discrepancies in button styling
Branding
A brand refresh was identified as the initial step in the process. This would be completed quicker than the UX work needed on the product, and would allow the sales team to start working with new marketing collateral and ad campaigns sooner.
The previous branding was showing signs of age and didn't represent the cutting edge tech company Tradable Bits had established itself as. There was almost no guidance or direction on the new branding, just one stipulation; the logo had to incorporate a reference to the the Giant Pacific Octopus. This was chosen by the founders as it represents the same values they saw in their company - adaptable, intelligent, multi-talented, with it's home in the Pacific North West.
After upwards of 100 different logotypes being produced and iterated upon. The following brand identity was settled upon..
UI Refresh
To begin the UI overhaul, I first conducted a review of the platform and analysed areas for improvement. I identified standard elements which needed to be consistently used throughout the platform. This, combined with text styles and standard colours led to a robust design system which could be used to transform the existing product. I found that there were many superfluous containers, borders, and shades of grey in use. This led to a messy and unclear experience for the user, examples of this can be seen below.
Examples of the old user interface before improvements.
The following assets were used in the creation of a new design system for the platform. Colours were aligned with the new brand identity to form a cohesive experience. A bespoke icon collection was also created featuring 120+ unique icons..
Once these elements had been defined and completed, the process of applying them to the existing interface could begin.
UX Improvements
At this point the UI updates had greatly improved the primary identified challenge of inconsistency, next up was to tackle the issue of complexity. The most pressing UX issue was the navigation; a complete overhaul was needed and after conducting research with key clients, I decided a sidebar implementation was the best option. This offered the user some key benefits:
1. We could remove a significant piece of content from the main section of the screen, allowing the user to compartmentalise the content they were ingesting. This mitigated the overwhelmed feeling which was reported by many users.
2. The sidebar layout allowed us to efficiently display the current page, and all other relevant pages/sub-pages. Before there was often confusion as to the user's current location on the platform and this made it very difficult to navigate and led to a poor feeling of confidence from the user.
The most complex tool on the platform was an automated ad creation interface, which allows the user to create and launch advertising campaigns on multiple social platforms at scale. A key improvement in reducing the complexity was the introduction of collapsible parent-child elements. This established a strong hierarchy and allowed the user to comprehend the tool much more easily.
before and after of the new organisation layout.
Key Takeaways
In roughly a year of work, a complete UX & UI overhaul was planned and executed which allowed for a vastly more comprehensible and useful suite of tools. This paved the way for increased customer retention & satisfaction, and a more confident & empowered sales team. The new product helped attract some of the biggest sports & entertainment names in the world who remain engaged, enthusiastic enterprise clients.
Ready to kickstart your project?
Click below to start making the dream into reality.
Year:
2019
Field:
AR
UX/UI
Website
Client:
Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza Music Festival Chicago commissioned an interactive fan engagement solution. I created an Augmented Reality experience comprising of an LED tower screen in the festival grounds and a real-time camera feed. Additionally, a microsite was created for fans to review download and share their snaps!
Project Overview
Lollapalooza is an iconic music festival seeing the worlds best artists play for 400,000+ fans over four days in the centre of Chicago. The production team requested a live activation which fans could engage with throughout the weekend. A tower of LED panels was used to create a live photo booth interaction with augmented reality effects.
Featured on:
The Problem
Lollapalooza has a huge international reputation, and often sees a high percentage of repeat attendees. The challenge they face each year is to bring new, fun & engaging attractions for the fans to interact with outside of the live performances.
Business & Design Goals
Engage
Create an interactive experience which would engage fans and give them a fun, memorable interaction. Fans should stop and be willing to wait in line to interact.
Innovate
Keep Lollapalooza at the forefront of fan engagement with new technologies such as Augmented Reality. Deliver an experience that fans won't have seen before.
Challenges
Originality
As mentioned before, there are a lot of return attendees for this festival, with a primarily young demographic. The solution had to be novel and original to impress and engage these fans.
Augmented Reality Build
Once augmented reality had been decided upon as the engagement feature, I used Spark AR™ for development. This is the AR software built by Facebook for use in Instagram and Facebook camera.
This development platform gave Lollapalooza the option to publish the effect to these apps for fans all over the world to use. This engagement was sold to an eyewear sponsor for the event, so naturally the ideation process was based around glasses. A multi-face effect with different festival style sunglasses got the green light from the festival and sponsors, and I added a frame with eyes that follow the user around to give the LED tower a bit of personality.
The completed build featuring 4 face trackers and frame animation.
Photo Microsite
An additional layer of interactivity was built into this effect. The tower captures photos when the fan holds a smile for 3 seconds, and uploads it to a microsite. A code displays on screen for the fan to retrieve their snap which they can download and share as they please.
Fans after taking their automated picture.
The microsite was built to match the brand style used on the photo booth in order to provide a cohesive experience. This was a mobile-first design but it was crucial that it would function equally well on desktop for fans who wanted to access their photos this way when they returned home after the event.It was inevitable that the festival goers would sometimes forget their code or miss it on screen as they were caught up in the festival atmosphere. Therefore, I introduced an option to search via day and time period rather than by code. There was also a report option that a fan could use to flag an image for moderators to remove.
Photo Booth gallery microsite
Key Takeaways
Augmented reality is a huge opportunity for standing out from the crowd and can result in massive engagement numbers. Over the four days of the festival, there were lines ~80% of the time, and over 8,000 photos taken.
Ready to kickstart your project?
Click below to start making the dream into reality.
Year:
2020
Field:
Branding
Website
UX/UI
Client:
What's Kraken
Industry news and insights platform for Sports, Music & Entertainment. Completed the full development of the project including brand creation, web and mobile interfaces & marketing assets.
Project Overview
What's Kraken is an industry news and insights platform for Sports, Music & Entertainment. I did the full development of the project including brand creation, web & mobile interface design and marketing assets.
The Problem
Through their work in market analysis and advertising, the client had amassed many valuable insights and knew the state of the industry inside and out; an outlet was needed to share this knowledge and bring more attention to the business.
Business & Design Goals
Showcase
It was important to show off the depth of knowledge and key insights in order to further establish the title of "Industry Expert". This would lead to a more trusted and reliable corporate personality.
Distill
A lot of the competition in this space engage in heavy content pushing strategies and overload their outlets. The goal was to share distilled, concise information, and the design was to be minimal in order to mirror that sentiment.
Challenges
Independent Brand
There had to be a new brand implemented into this website so as to provide some differentiation from the parent brand and its blog. The new brand had to reference the same design language, but at the same time have it's own identity.
Branding
The brand name chosen by the client was "What's Kraken?", a play on the term which referenced the octopus theme used for the parent brand. The goal for the identity was to make it engaging, bold and dynamic.
The Final brand identity presentation
Web Design
Throughout the web design process the main thing kept in mind was to remain minimal while also providing sufficient content to function as a news interface. In keeping with current trends a dark mode was chosen for the UI, with soft tones and shadows. The navigation was divided into articles and video content.
Web design mockups
Ready to kickstart your project?
Click below to start making the dream into reality.
Year:
2021
Field:
Augmented Reality
Art Direction
UX
Variety of custom augmented reality effects implemented on Instagram & Facebook and also at live events. A modern and memorable fan experience for your brand, contact now for more info.
AR Overview
Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the real world is enhanced by computer-generated objects. Social media apps have brought AR to the masses in fun and accessible ways. This area has huge potential for engagement and can really help elevate your brand or event to the next level.
AR Effect Types
Face Trackers
These effects track up to 4 users faces at a time, with endless possibilities for creativity; face paint, head gear, glasses, masks, jewelry, colour changes, background face deformation to name a few. I can integrate these effects with your branding, games, audio and more to create a truly unique and engaging experience.
Target Trackers
This type of effect uses a real world object as a trigger. This could be a logo, poster, wall mural, album cover - you name it. When the camera finds the target it can trigger an animation, a song, a 3D map, again the possibilities are huge.
Key Takeaways
An innovative engagement tool to empower your brands social presence, AR should be a go-to for your social marketing strategy. Previously achieved figures of ~300k Impressions in 3 days show just how effective this can be!
Here Are Some Teams We Have Created Custom AR Effects For, Get In Touch Today To Join Them!
Ready to kickstart your project?
Click below to start making the dream into reality.
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Ronan is the founder and Lead Designer with 7+ years empowering experiences through design, anywhere from digital to print & on-site engagements. His formal education is in Product Design, where he earned a First Class Honours Degree at the Technological University of Dublin. He has comprehensive professional experience in graphic, UX & UI, web design and strategic planning.
Outside of the design world you can find him enthusiastically working on some questionable DIY, or doing his best to enjoy the Irish sea.
Dublin 2023
Finalist
Finalist
Western Europe
Winner
2nd Place
Finalist
Winner
Location
The Forum, Ballymoss Road
Sandyford
info
design@ronanhand.com