Rich-Media Flash Social Network - 2007

Wallop, an early stage start-up spun out of Microsoft Research, was looking to redefine the social networking experience by presenting a highly customizable environment with powerful self expression, communication and social media creation tools.

In 9 months we transformed an alpha research project into a mass market consumer facing beta product. Wallop is an entirely Flash based web application. It provides a platform for creating customizable sites incorporating photos, videos, music, blogs with a unique mechanism of threaded commenting on any media object. The platform also presented a marketplace for open source Flash widgets and applications that extended the platform functionality and customizability.

There are three unique components of the Wallop user experience; first the ability to aggregate any recent activity or new content across one’s network, secondly allow extensive interface customization and media annotation, and thirdly provide robust content privacy controls, which allow one to manage who can see what content and to what extent they can interact with that content.

As the Director of User Experience, having joined the project shortly after its initiation, I led all aspects of the user experience and product design. I directed the initial concept work which we engaged Frog Design to develop. As I built the design team we brought the design work in-house. I outlined the user experience philosophy, architected much of the core functionality, developed the interaction design, directed the visual design and oversaw Flash development efforts. It was both a management and individual contributor role.