2021 in projects ★

#web_design_services #app_developement #website #wireframe #prototype #figma #ui #ux #landing #product_design

If you ask me, how I spent this year, I can say: quite productive, though I made a pause with freelance for a while. I had an opportunity to work with 2 big teams, get new experience and finally find out what is better: work for myself or for a company.

One day I've noticed that all my projects are divided into different areas every year. In 2014 I worked with real estate companies; 2015 - courses on spiritual growth; 2016 - ritual services (sudden); 2017 - websites for US and Australian family companies; 2018-2019 - nutritional and medical supplements; 2020 - brands and logos. 2021 was the year of edu-tech projects.

Recently, it has become increasingly difficult to find interesting projects with a decent budget on freelance platforms. With the pandemic, competition in the freelancing market has skyrocketed. If earlier I could even refuse clients because there were too many projects, now it is almost impossible to attract at least some attention from employers, for example on Upwork.

At some point, I realized: the only thing I do is writing cover letters, instead of working on projects. "Hello, I'm very interested in your project..." over and over again. Well, I'd prefer something better then endless searching. That's why I went to Habrahabr to check, if comeone need an experienced designer in their team.

I refreshed my profile and soon found an interesting offer in a large company for the formation of remote IT teams — SKIPP. Lead Product Designer on some interesting projects below :)

Garage24

User communities funding and realize creative projects

The first project with the new team was Garage24. A web and mobile app where users upload their projects to find "sponsors" and designers/developers for project realization. It's like Workspace and Kickstarter if they were one resource. When enough project sponsors are recruited and the budget goal is reached, performers can be found on the same resource. Everything is in one place.

My task was to develop a clickable UX prototype. Based on the materials prepared by the client, I created basic sections and a user story map that would be easy to rely on when developing a design. Unfortunately, I don't know at what stage this project is now, but I really like its concept.

Prototype pages in Figma

Skyeng

Largest edu-tech company in Russia

While I was working with prototypes, I was connected to a new project. It was one of the most popular foreign language learning services in Russia Skyeng. Their team needed to finalize the internal system, available only to service employees.

KPI pages in Figma

"My KPI" page

Project KPI Pop-up

TopSchool

Learning platform for highschool

The next big project was TopSchool. This is a platform for preparing students for the exam. Certified teachers conduct online lessons, curators help students with homework and any questions kids can have during their course.

The team has been working for several years and wanted to create their own platform from scratch so that all lessons, materials and online meetings are on one resource. They wanted to update the brand, so came to SKIPP with a new nice logo, developed by Art. Lebedev.

There was a lot of work to be done with this project. Together with the project manager, we developed the USM and the basic prototype of the main pages and sections.

Student and Courator flows

The next step was Course Constructor for TopSchool teachers.

Very inspired project. All teachers are young, interestinf persons, who speaks the same language with future university students. My goal was to create something bright and funny, but minimalistic at the same time, so kids could concentarte on their studies staying calm and enjoy their lessons.

Student Timetable page

SKIPP

A human cloud platform to build product development teams

Another project was SKIPP landing page adaptation to western clients. I got English materials and updated the design. Here what we got:

AVITO Business School

Webinars and materials for effective sales on Avito

The last project I worked on with SKIPP team was a website for AVITO learning platform. This guys impressed me with his huge brand book. It's a trustfull and popular russian marketplace, this brand was developed for a years. So you just need to follow brand rules during the project, that's it! I thought it'd be easy, but I was wrong :)

It was a challenge. Not just cause of hundreds of rules which I had to follow and make something unique, but also this webpage was developed strictly for Tilda and its grid. I should always keep in mind how it should work in front-end.

Apphud

Provides a smarter way to build and grow mobile apps with in-app subscriptions

Apphud developed an application for structuring and processing data about subscriptions, users, and their actions in the client's mobile application. They put all statistics, diagrams and details their users may need in one place. Also you can integrate any platform from Facebook to Slack. Incredible team and project that I truly loved.

My first task was to redesign Blog. I was free to my creativity and vision, but Design should've match the rest of a website. The task was very interesting, as I should work with details to make a new look and feel of the blog, saving the design itself. I also remade about 54 cover images for the existing articles. And here's what we got.

Apphud Blog page

Apphud Article page

Next task was to review Apphud Figma file and develop a system for comfortable search and work with the App elements.

Before/After

So, freelance or remoted work for a company?

I had an experience in office work and that was the reason I preferred to work for myself. This year made me change my opinion about working for a big company, with a big team. And that's why:

Companies I met are founded by young and creative guys who planned to enter or already entered the western market, which I understand very well.
Some companies help performers and customers find each other. All transactions and contracts go through them, so I no longer have to worry that the client would disappear without payment or drown me in edits to justify the project budget.
I can get a project manager who set tasks and the work goes as efficiently as possible.
No more endless searching and cover letters!

I can't say I made a decision that I'll never work as Freelancer anymore, but now I'll prefer a company with interesting project for my full-time.