Live on Indiegogo!

The Gecko Oven Cam campaign on was live on Indiegogo August through September. It fell short of the funding goal to move into final production. The Indiegogo page includes a variety of media, incluing graphics and videos, I created to highlight the Oven Cam.

Indiegogo funding page

App development

I built the Oven Cam app using Ionic, an open source, front-end SDK, which allows it to be deployed as a native iOS and Android app. The app features user authentication using Google Firebase (including Facebook and Email authentication), new camera setup over BLE, custom timers with local push notifications, Google Firebase Cloud Firestore database to get live camera power and battery level information, and connection to the camera over local Wi-Fi for image streaming.

Techy goodness aside, the UI design makes it's super easy to setup a new camera and start the oven monitoring in minutes.

Product and software design

The Oven Cam was the first time I dabbled in any physical product and hardware design. The product design included creation of a patent pending design for attaching the camera to the outside of an oven. I also did the 3d modeling for the camera case and built the physical prototypes of the oven camera. The internal circuit design uses a Raspberry Pi linux computer, digital camera, power management chip, lithium ion battery, analog to digital converter chip, status led lights, power button, and lots of other little resistors, diodes, and capacitors.

The camera software runs on Raspbian, a flavor of Debian Linux. On first startup a node server runs, allowing the client app to connect to the camera over BLE and configure the Wi-Fi connection. An Express server controls the camera hardware and serves images to the client app. Python scripts monitor the analog to digital converter chip to get battery level information. Battery level and power status information are updated in real time using Google Firebase Cloud Firestore database.

Video production

I did all filming and editing for each marketing video produced for the Indiegogo funding page and social media marketing.

Indiegogo product video
Social media marketing video

Rebrand

In 2016, TIAA underwent a major rebranding initiative, including a new name, logo, and visual identity. I led the team building the UI system and components for the new TIAA.org public website, collaborating closely with marketing, design, digital, and technology teams to deliver a cohesive, user-centered experience. The goal was to modernize the public site while improving usability, consistency, and accessibility across the organization’s digital ecosystem.

The project involved designing a responsive website from the ground up and developing a scalable UI system to be adopted across all TIAA platforms. I created a comprehensive UI style guide, contributed to the design and documentation of reusable components, and developed interactive prototypes for usability testing and stakeholder alignment. The effort resulted in hundreds of redesigned pages and applications supported by a flexible front-end design framework.

The redesign led to measurable improvements in user experience and engagement: a simplified site structure reduced page count by 50%, improving navigation and clarity around complex retirement topics. User engagement increased by 27%, bounce rates dropped by 41%.

Development manager

Resource management is a critical part of delivering successful projects. I managed a team of ten front-end architects and developers working on location, from home, and overseas. My experience leading this diverse team has helped me develop the skills necessary to coordinate and manage large scale projects.

The key areas of TIAA that I oversaw for the front-end team included the public site (TIAA.org), rebrand, UI style guide, email templates, TIAA Direct banking public site, and TIAA Asset Management site.

Technology lead

As technology lead, I designed and led the team that built some of the first automated, front-end build systems used at TIAA. Some of the first technologies my team helped introduce at TIAA included mobile-first design, SASS, Gulp, Node.js, Mustache, RequireJS, and ECMAScript 2015 (ES6).

My first technology lead role at TIAA began with architecting and overseeing the front-end system used by our secure, institutional administrator's website. This grew to include the public site (TIAA.org), UI style guide, TIAA Direct banking public site, TIAA Asset Management site, email templates, rebrand, TIAA.org mobile site, and accessibility.

UI style guide

A User Interface (UI) style guide defines the styles and standards for a company to help guide the creation of consistent websites and other display mediums. At TIAA, I built and maintained the style guides used by a team of over fifty UI developers and referenced by numerous other business partners. This involved working directly with UX partners to understand the design standards and rules of use, then develop the final code to be used on the websites.

Prototypes and concepts

From pencil and paper designs to clickable, interactive prototypes, being able to get initial designs and ideas tested early saves time and money. One of my primary roles during my time at TIAA was to create these clickable prototypes used in usability testing, presentations to stakeholders, and ultimately to create final web pages and apps.

In addition to creating prototypes for existing projects, I was tasked with envisioning the future state of our websites. These concepts stretched the boundaries of what was currently possible and helped push our technological abilities to the next generation.

Front-end development

Front-end development is really the "nuts and bolts" of a website; it's the code behind everything you see on a web page. At TIAA, I built components (buttons, navigation menus, carousels, etc.) and web pages that worked across browsers and devices, and were optimized for performance.