Show-notes. Squid App Design Choices: With Katie Farrell and Caolan Melvin from Squid Loyalty
Podcast 15-04-2021 – 13.15 am
Title: 0028 – Squid App Design Choices
Subtitle: Talking with Katie Farrell and Caolan Melvin from Squid Loyalty
Link:
Season: 2
Episode: 28
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Hosts:
Allen Higgins
Guest:
Katie Farrell (https://www.squidloyalty.ie)
Caolan Melvin (https://www.squidloyalty.ie)
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OPENING
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Welcome to the Design Talk podcast.
Today we are talking about design choices, or at least we think of them as choices.
We are joined Katie Farrell (COO) and Caolan Melvin (Head of Software Development) from Squid Loyalty, am Irish digital start-up founded in 2019.
First, would you like tell us a little about yourselves by way of introduction…
[Katie]
[Caolan]
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Katie, the spark of the idea for Squid happened around the time you took part in the study abroad program at University of California, Berkeley? What were your inspiration points, and earliest ideas for Squid then, how have they changed over time? (based on feedback and learning from users and clients?)
Caolan, how do you balance writing code with the idea of iterative development and user feedback? And of course, you have to think about the operational side of the technology, scaling and availability. So, there must be a tension between introducing functionality while keeping the foundations solid.
[Questions to prompt further discussion of some of your design stories…]
Your ideas behind the visual presentation and User Interface (UI)
* animating the Tap for loyalty interaction
* merging visual representations of cards in addition to the tally, e.g. 5/9
* delivering deep personalisation, respecting your client's brands
* the story about your animation for redeeming a voucher (completed card).
* making the best use of a small screen
* how you've carefully grown the features bar (Offers, Discover, Scan,
Wallet, Account)
* integrating with social media (f, I, T)
Your thoughts of the dynamics of UX user experience:
* making the App intuitive to use, self-explanatory
* physically modelling how customers collect then cash in a completed
card (the human element of your system)
* same for the shops themselves; your ideas for how clients
would/will/do use the system
The choices you made for the underlying technology choices and architecture:
* going for NFC over EAN codes/QR codes etc.
* choices driven by the commercial environment (using smartphone
platform versus plastic cards/tags)
* constraints of regulatory environment (GDPR)
* the trade-offs between a desire for simplicity versus the desire for
additional value-added features
CLOSING
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Thank you Katie and Caolan for chatting with us today. We often think of design as a series of choices we make in the workshop. Which it is, but you’ve also highlighted how design can also be a dialog, and what we as designers need to do is listen and respond.
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Thank you for listening to Design Talk
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Acknowledgements
Music by Argofox (CC-BY license)
https://soundcloud.com/argofox/ezaone-supernova
(EzaOne - Supernova: youtu.be/xZDYu5azS-c)
Title: “Eza One - Supernova”
Artist: “Argofox”
Source: “https://soundcloud.com/argofox/ezaone-supernova”
License: “CC BY”
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