Ben LaForge

MedShare Donation Locator

Deliverable: Mobile application for iOS and Android
Programs: Adobe Experience Design, XCode, Android Studio

Read more about my design process here.

For my capstone class at GT, my team was given a client with a project. We tackled this project over the course of two semesters, beginning with the design phase, and then moving into implementation.

The first semester I thrived. I led our team meetings, created the low- and high-fidelity prototypes solo, and conducted many of our user tests. Being the only Computational Media major on a team of Computer Scientists, I was the only team member with pre-development expertise. This is the field I desire to enter into post-graduation.

During the second semester we delved into development. I was our team's lead front-end developer, focusing on the design of each page, as well as taking one of the four tabs, the about page, as my personal project.

At the end of the second semester we presented our project, not only to our class at Georgia Tech, but also to MedShare at their headquarters. There were many more people than we expected there - enough that we had standing room in the back and people bringing chairs with them. The head of marketing approached us afterwards to say how happy she was that the application was properly branded, a personal highlight of mine.

Ingenious Med Onboarding

Deliverable: Tutorial Screen Images
Programs: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop

Read more about my design process here.

I was assigned the project to replace the current tutorial screens in our application. I was given the current image files and Illustrator files of iOS and Android devices to use.

This project required a lot of research and multiple iterations of design. There were a lot of people invested in this project that wanted periodic updates, and the timeline got pushed up multiple times.

The end result was a new set of tutorial images, now with updated content, design, interaction, and animation. Plus, I now know a TON about onboarding because of all the research. We are also beginning work on a new phase of onboarding via a third party platform.

Maintenance Cost Estimator

Deliverable: Desktop application for Windows and Mac OS
Programs: Eclipse Java Neon, Lanch4j, Inno Setup Compiler

During my summer internship at Trackmobile, LLC this was my largest task. The sales team desired a tool that would estimate the maintenance cost of one of their machines as compared to their largest competitor. The goal was to show that, while we may be more expensive up front, it's because we provide a better machine that requires less maintenance and will be the cheaper option after only a couple years of owning it.

I was the only developer in the company, so I was given complete creative freedom with what to make and how to make it. I decided on a desktop application created with JavaFX. I ran this idea by my boss to get it cleared, then began production. I started this project first and finished it last because the scope was so large and I ran into a lot of challenges.

This program stores the current prices of all parts and consumables required for a rail car mover's maintenance, allowing the user to alter any of the data and save their changes to load in at a later date. They can see the results of each company compared side by side and on a graph, and they can even save a well-laid-out PDF containing a summary of the results and a company boiler statement/disclaimer. There are many more functions (some of which were simply personal desires of my higher-ups and others that actually contradicted ones that were given earlier) and many of them, if not all, I didn't know how to do at first. I had never worked with JavaFX before. I knew Java, but JavaFX was foreign to me. This project was a huge learning experience and I am proud, as were my superiors, with the product I produced.

Atlanta Community Playbook Webpage

Deliverable: Webpage designed to work alongside the Atlanta Community Engagement Playbook
Programs: HTML/CSS/Javascript, beginning with Bootstrap Template

My professor was a leading advocate and contributor in the Atlanta Community Engagement Playbook. The assignment was to create a web app that would accompany the playbook in some way. We read through the playbook, determined the primary user, and decided on a scope. Our idea was to create a web application that would help Community Organizations get organized so they could begin to develop their new initiatives.

The landing screen had a minimal design, leading the user to the main functionality with a large green button. The tool could also be accessed through the navigation bar or by scrolling. If the user scrolls, they will first see an about section, which takes information directly from the playbook. Below that is the tool. Here, the user is able to select which areas they want to get organized in. In each section there are yes or no questions. If the user selects yes, a text box will appear asking them to write down information related to that question. If the user selects no, an action item will appear, referring the user back to the playbook. At the end, the user has the ability to print the results. This project was only a couple weeks from conception to completion, and the idea was to focus on the interaction design rather than functionality. That being said, the "Save for later" button only generates an alert, and the "View PDF" option opens a preloaded PDF.

The web page used to be spread across five pages, one for the landing page and four for each assessment. Later we decided to consolidate the tool into one page for simplicity and ease of use. We used JavaScript to hide or reveal the sections the user wants to see or not see.

GitHub Repository Here ​

Infographic

Deliverable: Infographic document detailing the ROI of owning a Trackmobile over competing machines
Programs: Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Excel

During my summer internship at Trackmobile, LLC I was tasked with creating an infographic whose design coincided with the infographic the other intern, Sarah, was creating. My infographic was to give insight into the return on investment of owning one of our machines. These facts and figures were inherently comparative, so I had a lot of research to do. We didn't have as many hard and fast numbers in our system as I would have liked, so I felt mildly constrained with my design. I struggled through many layouts before I settled on the one shown here. The infographic isn't 100% complete, however. The way they wanted to write out the "assumptions made" was TBD by the time I left, and the graph depicting maintenance cost comparisons hadn't been made. The data for the graph was largely coming from the calculator I made (see above), whose data was still being finalized as I left.

GT Mini Factbook Redesign

Deliverable: 16 Page document with original graphs to visualize data from the 2015 GT Mini Factbook
Programs: Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator

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This assignment asked me to visualize data in new ways to increase the readability of the 2015 GT Mini Factbook. The original factbook can be found here. The booklet was put together in Adobe InDesign, while the graphs were generally created in Adobe Illustrator.

The challenge for this assignment was laying out all of the data in a coherent way. It had to be either 8, 12, or 16 pages, and I wanted the spreads to be related to each other. Some categories had more data so I had to not simply accept the data as it came organized but rather be willing to move things around. At first the pages were lopsided, so I had to create a page format that could be carried over to have more consistent use of white space, as well as an organization of the data itself to distribute it more evenly across each spread.