Project Description
Sync capability within the AOL product family has been around for a long time. However, the site had been dated and forgotten. My team took on the responsibility of improving the experience by providing ways to sync AOL Mail (Contacts and Calendar Events) with device Address Book and Calendar. Instead of building and maintaining the technology within AOL, we decided to use a 3rd party API.
Contribution
At the beginning of the product development phase, I worked with the development team to understand the integration efforts for this project. With very limited access and understanding of the technology, I stepped up and took the lead in putting all the puzzle pieces together. Technically, there were much more talented people, however, from a product perspective, someone had to take the lead in this. My UI reviews turned into scrum-like sessions where everyone brought what they knew to the table. After the product took more shape, I was gladly able to move back into the role of UI designer. Also, despite the goal of creating an AOL Sync portal experience, we wanted to make it as much a part of the AOL Mobile experience as possible, while also surfacing it within AOL Mail with its own customized look and feel; I have absorbed the conventions for this across the board and acted as a liaison amongst other groups.
Learned
During this project I experienced what it was like to act as a project manager, and through this I learned about the most efficient ways organize and distribute information. I also exercised what I had previously learned from a documentation workshop that I attended at the well-known IA Summit conference; I was able to create a documentation history, which was especially important for a complex project like this that contained multiple integration points.
Highlights
- This is one of the most challenging projects I've ever worked on (on par with my master's thesis project).
- Even though the UI changes were minimal, the logic behind it changed numerous times!
