Plyfe Widgets & CMS
Overview
Plyfe is a builder tool for several types of interactive widgets that can be created for any device. Users can create and publish widgets (cards) and rich media ad units across mobile, social and desktop with the Plyfe CMS platform. Plyfe CMS lets you create, manage, and publish widgets as well as monitoring and reviewing the respective KPIs.
Role
Information Architect, UX / UI Design, Front-end Development
Client
Plyfe, Inc.
Tools
Omnigraffle, Photoshop, Plyfe CMS, Sourcetree, Sublime
Challenges
Being the only full-time designer on the team for most of Plyfe's lifespan I relied on feedback from my engineering team and others outside the organization.
The Plyfe tool changed from being a consumer-facing product to a B2C multimedia platform about 2 years into development.
After the ord change we had to rework several of the core gaming mechanics so they fit into a dynamic builder tool where the user can change anything from the text to the images to colors used.
The widgets we were creating had to work in several different IAB standard sizes without the user having to change too much content on creation.
Design Process
As the Lead UX Designer at Plyfe, I oversaw all phases of design as it evolved from being a consumer-facing product to a B2C multimedia platform. My design process worked in parallel with our engineering team's sprints making it easier to plan what features were being implemented. This agile environment revolved around 1-week sprints and directly impacted our ability to churn out new widget types every couple of weeks. Eventually my design process evolved from mocking up wireframes in Omnigraffle and UI in Photoshop to creating the layouts directly in code using CSS/HTML and Javascript. I would initially create very rough wireframes to get a feel for where content blocks would display at the largest and smallest sizes and then jump into the dev environment and continue refining the layouts. This method gave me the advantage of knowing what the layouts looked like at every responsive breakpoint in real time. Since the team lacked a dedicated UI designer we utilized the Bootstrap component library and modified it as needed.
Conclusion
As the platform evolved over the years so did the team and myself. And even though this iteration of the Plyfe builder tool is no longer around it was well received by many of our clients and their users. I can definitely say that the skills I developed during my time at Plyfe has made me a better designer, developer and leader.