Web Development & Design
for
Hardware Companies
Web development services for electronic & embedded hardware companies, with a focus on UI & UX design.
Hi, I'm Alan
I work at the intersection of embedded hardware and web technology - with small hyper-focused companies that like to get things done.
Here’s how I can help.
Services
Full Stack
Web Development
Product
Photography
UI & UX Design
Web + Embedded
I have a small but well understood tech stack that I use to help my clients
Tech Stack
Embedded systems face some unique challenges when it comes to user interfaces and experiences that web technologies are strongly suited to help address.
Challenges
Challenge
Reducing Support Costs
User interface design is often treated as an after thought in many embedded-first products, due to the numerous engineering challenges that come with embedded design.
This often leads to higher support costs for engineering teams, as products may not follow typical UX & UI interaction patterns which users expect, resulting in higher volume of simple support queries.
Challenge
Creating competitive distance
As UX and UI are often a secondary consideration for embedded devices, investing in both is a high ROI way to differentiate yourself from competing products while affording greater attention to customer needs and post purchase customer care.
Challenge
Communicating product quality
Strong UX focused design coupled with beautiful UI are proxies used by customers to judge the quality of your engineering - good looking, easy to use products are judged more favourably by customers and customers tend to be more forgiving to product idiosyncrasies.
Challenge
Delivering UIs on constrained hardware
A typical web-dev first approach is to sledgehammer through problems with - relative to embedded devices - super computers. Embedded devices have many more constraints placed on them, ranging from available processing capability, RAM, and storage to comms links.
By moving a lot of the processing requirements to local devices - locally connected user desktops & smartphones, or IoT web apps - constrained embedded devices can be left to focus on what they do best while still affording users elegant, easy to use interfaces to your devices.
I’ve worked on a variety of interesting projects, spanning from traditional web well into the embedded space.
Work
eBike Computer with Swappable Themes
miniDash is an internal project that is working to provide hotswappable UIs for eBikes. The core concept behind it is to do away with boring, set-in-stone UIs that come standard with eBikes, and provide personality and fun for riders. I am responsible for the web development and UI designs, along side an embedded engineer who is responsible for the hardware and graphics framework (written in Go).
Viticulture Data Collection Tool Suite
Vure is a viticultural data collection tool that I product managed, including market selection, primary research and user engagement. Vure is designed to help streamline in-field data collection away from paper and Excel based systems. It consists of native Android and iOS apps, as well as a web frontend, which I am now responsible for.
Visit
Company Rebrand & Website Design
DesignA Electronics provides bespoke embedded software consultancy services, as well as a small range of aerospace products. They approached me to help manage a rebranding effort and website redesign. I helped find and engage designers for the rebrand to generate marketing collateral, new company & product logos, update their SquareSpace website and work with the team to create website copy.
Visit
Website Design, Implementation & Photography
I worked closely with TL Embedded's Director and Lead Engineer to produce a website that showcased their design and engineering capability, while maintaining a clean, minimalist and to-the-point aesthetic. I also undertook product photography for a range of devices to help showcase TLE's hardware design capability.
Visit
Various Clients
Product Photography
I've helped carry out hardware device focused product photography for a number of clients, seeking to capture their hardware in visually interesting and eye catching ways. These product shots have gone onto their websites, as well as print media and marketing collateral. I have a custom build lighting setup and lightbox to help experiment with different lighting configurations and background media.
Geospatial Data Manipulation API
I started working with Integrape after they acquired Vure - and have been assisting in a broad range of areas, as one tends to when working with a startup. Amongst many other projects, I've helped bring their internal software practices inline with modern standards, and oversee the development of an internal API for geospatial data manipulation, consumed by their SaaS platform.
VisitAgTech Startup
Milk ordering & delivery system
I'm currently working with an early stage AgTech start up that has developed an end to end cow milking, pastuerisation, bottling, purchase and delivery system, with a focus on animal welfare as their primary driver. I helped develop the order, payment and delivery system, which was iterated on quickly while they were exploring end markets and business models.
VisitWireless Internet Service Provider
Website Redesign & Website Pricing Widget
Created and implemented a new design for a rural Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP). The project included defining new branding, colours, iconography, as well as a custom pricing widget designed to work in with their specialist pricing model.
IoT Invasive Species Capture
Invasive Spcies Data Collection Backend
I worked with TL Embedded to create an AWS backend for accepting an invasive species trap system communicating over the Sigfox network. The system decoded the incoming data (provided by TLE), saved it to a DynamoDB instance and then forwarding it a service for visualisation.
Sometimes people have nice things to say about the work I do for them.
Testimonials
Alan understood what I wanted very quickly, and then made it happen. It was great working with him.
Tim Lamborn - Director & Lead Engineer, TL Embedded
We engaged Alan to help manage a company wide brand refresh with new marketing collateral and website redesign. He was very easy to work with, took on a number of areas for the project - from product shots through to managing other designers - and just got things done.
Andre Renaud - Software Engineering Manager, DesignA Electronics
And a little bit about me.
About
I started my career in embedded electronics.
Since then I’ve had a whirlwind tour of putting my fingers into marketing, sales, business development, product management, advising start ups and now finally coming full circle back to a technical field with web development.
My passion and interests lies in making things, and helping companies to make things that improve thelives of their customers as well as improve their company's internal operations.
Having worked in product development consulting environments for my entire career, I find it to be where I do my best work and can most positively affect the companies and teams that engage with me.