Earlier work · Motorola · 2014–2015

Motorola WAVE

An encrypted walkie-talkie for governments, militaries and enterprises. The relaunch produced the platform's highest yearly revenue.

Role: UX Lead and Senior iOS Developer

concurrent users, end-to-end encrypted: 5,000
yearly revenue for the platform, after the relaunch: Highest

WAVE put a two-way radio in a phone, for police, militaries and enterprises. Motorola Solutions bought Twisted Pair, the Seattle startup behind it, in January 2014, to move push-to-talk off dedicated radios. The phone app was where that plan worked or didn't.

It was FIPS compliant, with end-to-end encryption for group and private calls across 5,000 concurrent users. People use it under stress, so there is no room for a confusing tap.

I led UX design and iOS UI development: research and competitive analysis, then a redesign, a rewrite and a relaunch on iOS and Android. It produced the platform's highest yearly revenue, on mobile sales.

Getting an 87-year-old corporation to back modern interaction patterns took an executive sponsor, design critiques and user flows drawn screen by screen. I also refactored the legacy iOS codebase and added text messaging.

The WAVE login screen on an iPhone: fields for a username, a password and a server address above Log In, Take a Tour and Need Help, with the keyboard up.

A user flow titled "Login and PTT", drawn as a row of phone wireframes: launch screen, login, home, then the channel screen, with red circles and arrows marking each tap and swipe. — Fig. 1

A user flow titled "Mute channel & change channel", drawn as a row of phone wireframes from the lock screen through settings and the members list to a channel map. — Fig. 1