It’s been on my mind to cover some artwork i’ve inserted into my apps, since I own them. Maybe this will serve as inspiration to make some of your work less corpa-corp boring — and maybe you’ll realize apps are public spaces of the mind which deserve an equal shot at growing neural diversity ♥
I basically run a bicycle marketplace here, where I fund it by myself so as the owner, sole employee and lead designer I am responsible for everything. While it hasnt been profitable in its 8-year history yet as of 2022 its been tiring optimizing everything to be perfect without any kind of personality or flavor of my own. This is why I have started to identify and take opportunities to inject the app with fun and culture, especially when I can do so at a low cost with just text and images ( especially when there needs to be text an imagery there anyway and it doesnt matter a whole heck of a lot what kind )
The first decade of my career as a seasoned UIX Mobile App designer has been handling primarily corporate apps serving millions of customers. Not only was it sub-optimal to add punky, counter-culture art or hilarous memes into the software — but sneaking them in always risked a lengthy battle explaining myself as an artist or outright getting fired by “do nothing management”. So struggling with the long and winding road of making my own software profitable for years, coupled with a global pandemic, I decided that I need to make the work meaningful for myself. I decided that I have the freedom finally to put together my marketplace how I want to and not how wallstreet commands me to for maximalization of every cent to the dollar. I decided that what makes me a unique an interesting individual should and will blead into existence through my work — because at the end of the day if I am not able to help someone connect and find a bicycle at least by visiting my art space I am able to give them an art experience.
Pacman Ghost
Because I am a big-time gamer i’ve added the most recognizable arcade character of them all to our empty search results screen to lighten up the experience of hitting nothing with your query. I believe this gives the searcher a lighthearted moment and encourages them to search again
The Bounty Hunter Who Shall Not Be Named
One of the most visible memes in Sprocket is the Bounties tab ( soon to be relabled as Wanted ) Where the icon is of a familiar yet mysterious bounty hunter from a galaxy far far away
Sword&Sworcery Holy Trigon of Ultimate Power
Sometimes inspiration comes from smaller games im playing like the amazing Sword&Sworcery on iOS which redefined what mobile games could be for me! In the game you play a Scythian warrior who puts together this mysterious trigon to fight a great evil — which I thought was a great metaphor for what my team and I are trying to do with fighting the evil of cars.
Lyft Pink Non-pink Subscriptions
Sometimes I take inspiration from regular Sillicon Valley stuff and pay homage to great work that has been cast off by inexplicable corporate “process”. When I led the Growth Design effort at Lyft, my growth team came up with this cheeky non-pink animated rainbow gradient to represent the subscription sub-brand. However later on ( rather than fixing any of the many other broken things about the bikeshare network ) “management” rebranded Lyft Pink to a more boring corporate UI treatment. So having the opportunity I brought it back in my own app when we launched subscriptions and I think it looks rather cool when you see it in action! 🌈
Matrix Red-pill Representing the Foundation Subscription
In terms of the subscription itself I needed some powerful metaphorical symbolism to represent the service in pictographic form. Because of how inspirational both the Isaac Asimov Foundation Trilogy and The Matrix by the Watchowski Brothers/Sisters has been to my work Idecided to leverage their symbolysm. The red pill represents taking the act to go down the rabbit hole like Alice, learning about the true nature of the world and what it takes to fix it. In addition the Watchowskis have mentioned wanting to reclaim the “red pilling” symbolysm from the extreme right and I hope I can contribute to that in some small way. After all, riding does get you to talk to other minds about whats wrong with the status quo and gives you plenty of time to think about how you can be a part of the solution!
My Name as the Ultimate Distance Filter
Since my name is literally 7 ( Seven ) I decided to start taking advantage of that by propagating the number throughout the interface. At the end of the day it does not matter very much if youre searching 50 miles vs 77 or 200 vs 777 but its a whole hellova lot more fun! There was also some confusion about something being infinity miles away — which is now solved by everything being some amount less than 7777777 miles away ( which essentially covers the whole world )
Morrowind for the Win ☀
One of the first mods I made to software was modding the popular RPG known as Morrowind. At first I created small enhancement mods people could download, and later quests. Eventually graduating to full overhaul mods I built Ashes of Apocalypse which served as a catalyst for Bethesda buying the rights to Fallout and shipping Fallout 3! ☢ Paying homage to my humble roots of modding gaming software which has now turned into a professional passion of modding operating systems with apps such as Sprocket, I give you the empty profile state:
Theres many more easter eggs and cultural references in my app. I encourage you to find them all and share them with the world. Best of all since im not an omnipotent dead-to-the-soul corporation leave me a comment with suggestions for fun/weird/gamer stuff to add next — and I might just build it! ;)
You can find the app here if youre interested in exploring what my team and I have built so far www.sprocket.bike/app
