Due to NDA, only minimal details are available.
The company/product
Modo Labs is a SaaS company owning a no/low code app building platform for creating holistic higher education and enterprise apps. The Modo platform provides the agility for customers to digitally transform their organizations by quickly building, deploying, evolving, and scaling tailored and branded experiences that keep everyone secure and connected, foster culture, and future-proof their organizations. For a small company, big name clients include Okta, Goldman Sachs, Schneider Electric, Capital One, Penn State, University of Houston, and University of Central Florida. The company holds a handful of patents for innovative technology and valuable intellectual property.
My role
I was the lead product designer for higher education modules, or XServices, white labeled for use by over 300 universities. Modules I designed and helped design included Course Catalog; Courses LMS (Learning Management System — think class announcements, assignments, grades); Campus News; Photo Galleries; Video Galleries; and Registrar. I gained experience designing and frontend developing for both responsive desktop and native app experiences, championing consistently applied design patterns, usability testing, and optimizing for accessibility and inclusivity. My process included researching, prototyping, testing, and coding the new modules in static JSON/connected with Modo's proprietary software to hand off to the engineering and integrations teams to implement.
I also influenced the design of core UI elements at the atomic and molecular level — for example, writing specs for breadcrumbs, loading indicators, calendar date pickers, and message threads. I also worked on the no-code screen building software, and established a usability testing program.
Challenges as a designer
Since each university has their own branding, part of the product offering is pulling through each university’s style guide (theme). What I designed had to uphold visual design principles of hierarchy, contrast, and meet accessibility standards no matter which colors and typefaces a university configures.
Another major component of the experiences I designed is that the content was to be connected into existing data sources/APIs. Not every university's course catalog data, for example, is parsed in the same way (bucketing of class title, section(s), times, instructor, etc.). I had to learn about and design for multiple scenarios to ensure the search experience would still make sense and uphold UX principles such as common region and proximity.
I also gained renewed appreciation for the collaboration between design and engineering, learning JSON, my fourth coding language, in order to have more interactive prototypes and technical discourse.
Lastly, the challenge I most appreciated about the Modo-powered app experience is that a university might use Canvas or Blackboard for course content; RojoServe for their registrar; and say HID Mobile for virtual ID badges or payments. But with the Modo-powered app, the end user never needs to know this and juggle between multiple apps. What I designed bridged multiple data sources — which, for the end user, streamlined access to resources, leading to higher engagement and productivity.