Sacha Greif » Portfolio

Kayboo

Sacha — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:21:52 +0000

Kayboo is a brand new service that bridges the gap between freelancers and companies, letting freelancers manage their career and companies find the right person. It needed to be obvious from the start that the site addresses both audiences, so Kayboo decided to use a dual blue and orange color scheme.

Kayboo home page

This was a very quick project, as Kayboo already had a previous design coded out before deciding that it wasn’t up to the task. The deadline was tight, but I managed to come up with a new design that set the right tone, while being flexible enough to let the site grow in different directions if needed.

Kayboo dashboard

I took care of the dashboard area, providing Kayboo with a basic layout and widgets they could reuse throughout the site. And I also designed the logo, with a chronometer to symbolize the time users will save by using the site.

Edeneo

Sacha — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:08:35 +0000

Edeneo is a service that lets you safeguard important information like website logins, bank account information, or even your will in the event of death or disability. The subject matter was serious, so the design had to be appropriate. But we also didn’t want to scare away users by forcing them to contemplate their own mortality more than necessary.

Edeneo homepage mockup

After mutliple back and forths, we finally setteld on a black and blue color scheme with green accents. The black would give the design the right atmosphere (and would evoke security and seriousness), while the blue would evoke heaven and match well with the name. And of course, green is the color of hope, and also fits in with the “garden of Eden” theme.

Document management interface

Although a lot of time was spent on the front-end, getting the back-end right was even more important. Thankfully, establishing strong design guidelines in the first phase made it easy to move faster and get the back-end UI done fairly quickly.

The page you see when someone you know has passed away. Not an easy thing to design.

Logo design is not my specialty, but once I scribbled this concept on my pad I knew we had to use it. It’s an angel, but it’s also something else… Can you spot it?

It might not be the FedEx logo, but it's a start

Le Monde

Sacha — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:07:51 +0000

It’s not often that you get an opportunity to work for a brand like Le Monde, and especially on such a project. At a time where the news industry is trying to reinvent itself, I was hired to design the newspaper’s new iPhone/iPad application [iTunes link].

Although I worked on both platforms, I will focus here on the iPad part of the app, since it has more features.

Disclaimer: the following images are photoshop mockups, not actual application screenshots. But they are still fairly representative of the finished product, which you can check out on iTunes.

The iPad app's bookshelf/kiosk metaphor lets you quickly scan recent editions

Although my worked needed to follow existing brand guidelines, I was left fairly free to design the overall look how I wanted to. I chose to move away from bright Web 2.0 colors and use a dark theme to give the interface a serious feel while using the strong contrast to put the newspaper’s white page forward.

The split view is one of Apple's most useful UI innovations

One of the challenges at the time was designing for the iPad, a platform that nobody had ever seen or used. After watching the keynote a dozen time and going through every article I could find on the subject, I decided to pick up a few of the new iPad UI elements such as the bookshelf metaphor or the split view.

The page preview pop-over lets you quickly scan through pages

I also came up with new ways to use the iPad’s larger screen, such as pop-overs for navigating within a page, and previewing other pages.

I just wish I could’ve exercised more control on the finished product, and taken more time to polish the application. As is usually the case when working for large and complex organisations, there were a lot of external pressures, but altogether this was a great experience, and I have no doubt that the iPad is leading a revolution in the way we use and relate to computers.

Le Post iPhone

Sacha — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:26:36 +0000

Le Post is a community news site with a twist: an active staff of editors checks each post and decides which one to mark as verified or promote to the front page. With this blend of user-generated and professional content, the site (which belongs to Le Monde Interactif, the company which edits Le Monde’s website) has quickly risen to become one of the hottest french news sites. The site’s iPhone app had two main goals: provide the occasional users with a quick overview of the day’s news and trending topics, while also enabling power users to access more advanced features, such as tags, user profiles, and favorites. We also decided to include a photo booth easter egg to help the app go viral.

I came in mid-project, with a strong visual identity already established by previous designers, and a lot of share-holders invested in the project. All this added to the challenge, but it was worth it as the app was very well received by the site’s community, and quickly climbed the rankings of the french app store to reach number 7 on the free apps list.

Youji

Sacha — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:06:25 +0000

“Youji” means “travel log” in Chinese, and it’s just that: a travel log of 3 months in China, during the summer of 2009, covering Beijing, Wuhan, and Sichuan.

Blog front page

Packaging Specialties

Sacha — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:14:36 +0000

Designing an e-commerce site is never easy, if only for the huge number of details you need to take into account. WDE asked me to provide a design for one of their clients, Packaging Specialties. I gave them my mockups and they took care of the rest.

Although I’m not a logo designer by any means, I also created the new logo for the site.

Packaging Specialties home page

Product page

NoCoffee CMS

Sacha — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 10:01:36 +0000

NoCoffee, a french webdesign company, developed their own Rails-based CMS. They hired me to redesign the interface and make it both better looking and more usable. My goal was to clearly map out the software’s content structure through the interface itself to make it easy for new users to be quickly productive. I also tried to move away from the classic look of web content management systems with lots of widgets and text, and go for more of a streamlined desktop app look.

Media gallery page

Edit page with form error states

Race Registration Kiosk

Sacha — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:50:08 +0000

Bazu took the same front-end software as the LeapForm Kiosk, asked me to adapt the design, then plugged it into their existing Race Management system, and there you go, the Race Registration Kiosk was born.

Registration Confirmation Screen

It was successfully used to register people at a number of different races, and as you can see even little kids were using it to sign up. This was a very good learning experience for me, because I got to see people using something I made, and got real-time feedback on what was working (or not working) in my design.

So simple kids can use it

TollFreeConferencing.com

Sacha — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:48:01 +0000

TollFreeConferencing.com is a site that provides great enterprise-level conference calling. When they asked me to redesign their site and back-end, the main goal was to make the site as profesionnal as the service.

TollFreeConferencing.com home page

Call Archives Section

Leapform Kiosk

Sacha — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:21:31 +0000

Clearing up your health care situation is no fun (just ask Barack Obama). But here’s a field where technology can actually make things simpler. Leapform is a social services company who’s developing a touchscreen kiosk that make filling an application much faster.

Touchscreen Kiosk

Their kiosk even include video conferencing, and multiple kiosks can be managed by a single remote operator.

Kiosk Management Interface