TTYN (Talk To You Now) is an Android app that allows voice- and text-communicators to participate in real-time conversations using transcription and text-to-speech technology. It was designed and developed in only 26 hours (give or take—Red Bull bends time) and with it, my team took second place out of 84 teams at the 2013 AT&T developer conference hackathon. We even presented at the keynote alongside AT&T Mobile’s Ralph de la Vega and Cisco’s John Chambers.

The process was a microcosm of the interactive design and development workflow: First thing, we brainstormed and judged any and all ideas we had. How complex is the idea? Can it be done in 24 hours? What are the use cases? Would we use it? Is it a good candidate to win a niche or general category?

And once we’d selected on our best candidate, our next steps were proof of concept and sample flows to prove the UI’s complexity. It was in this phase that a lot of the kinks of the basic idea were worked out and in which a great many phase 2 ideas were conceived and captured for eventual execution. Then, with the development team concept testing and starting application development, I began wireframing the user interface and exploring the TTYN brand with AT&T’s brand colors as a starting point. Explorations of iconography, typography, textures, and Android platform UI standards kept me busy until I wrapped the first draft of the visual design. Assets needed to be cut and resized, revisions needed to be made. But soon the developers were testing while I started working on presentation assets that focused on our three core use cases—the hearing impaired, the busy executive in a meeting, and the call center employee.

We had 90 seconds to present. A mix of slides and live demo. And whatever we did—great concept, killer UX, awesome use cases, working demo—it was enough to get us through as one of the three finalists that presented the next morning. And to put a little change in our pockets. 

Creative team
JD Jordan, experience design lead
Walt Austin, development lead
Aaron Berk, developer
Jeremy Lizza, developer
Basil Udoudoh, developer

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