Park Compass is a Google Maps based park finder for the City of Vancouver. You are able to search for parks using geolocation or address search, and you can filter your results by park facility (playgrounds, baseball diamonds...).
I built the project for a course called Directed Studies, which gives students an opportunity to dig deeper into an area that interests them, whether that is design, development, rich media, etc. My choice to build Park Compass was based on a few factors:
With those factors in mind, and some inspiration from the City of Vancouver's Open Data project, I came up with the idea for Park Compass. Having no prior experience with databases, PHP, MySQL, or XML, I was in for a bit of a development challenge. After many many hours of research, experimentation, and asking questions on Stack Overflow, the development finally came together.
The site is very function purposed; users should be able to land on the site and begin their search right away. With that in mind, I decided to take a lot of design inspiration from mobile apps. Great apps are focused in their function, and use the available space efficiently. I also wanted to make the iconography as intuitive as possible, using trees to represent parks, and a familiar looking user marker. The final design is very streamlined, functional, and appealing.
Overall, Park Compass has been a great success. It has been well received and helped me to achieve all of my educational goals for the course. I was able to explore the Google Maps API, learn MySQL, PHP, and XML, and dive deeper into effective design. Most importantly though, I think that it is a useful tool that will help people to get out and explore Vancouver's parks, which in turn will better connect them with their community and each other!
More info: Exploring Park Compass Parkcompass.com
Creative U is a showcase for creative Canadian students that was developed for a Database Design course that I took at Capilano University. The idea for the site arose from a team discussion about how hard it is to get our work out to a large audience. On other showcase sites like Dribbble and Behance, students struggle to be noticed amongst the hundreds of thousands of other users.
Our solution was to build a site using HTML/JS/PHP/MySQL where Canadian students could upload snippets of their work. By limiting the scope of our users, it allows us to drive traffic to a more targeted audience, hopefully allowing student work to be seen by the right people!
As part of a small team I had influence over the concept and layout of the site, but my main role was as technical lead - doing the local HTML/JS/PHP/MySQL development, and launching the site to a live server. It was a challenging project as it was one of my first forays into building for a dynamic database.
We received excellent marks on this assignment as it was incredibly ambitious and we were able to successfully execute it in a short amount of time. Our intent is to continue to solidify the user experience and to build out a few other features. Hopefully Creative U will soon be a great tool for student discovery!
If you have any questions about the project, don't hesitate to contact me!
Visit Creativeu.ca
MapDash is a modern scavenger hunt geomobile webapp. It is the brainchild of a Vancouver startup, Flock and Swarm Mobility Inc. MapDash consists of 3 main components: A promotional site, an HTML5 mobile web app, and a game design website. I was brought on to the small team as the ux designer / front-end developer for the game design website, which is where users will build the scavenger hunts, before heading out to play them on their mobile devices. I worked on this project full-time from May-August last summer, and have continued to provide part-time support throughout the school year. A public beta should be launching soon, so keep your ears open! (or better yet, go to mapdash.com and register to be informed when the beta goes public!)
| Misc. | JavaScripts | Programs |
|---|---|---|
| HTML/CSS | Bootstrap | Photoshop |
| Google Maps API | DataTables | Illustrator |
| Google Webfonts | jQuery UI | Coda 2 |
| Bootstrap | ValidationJS | Balsamiq Mockups |
| LESS | Omnigraffle | |
| UnderscoreJS |
I can't give away too much since this project hasn't launched, but I willl say that SSHARE is a service that lets you store files on the cloud, and share them with links that you can track. It's going to be cool when it come out!
I was responsible for the design and front-end development of the site. We wanted the site to be simple, bold, trustworthy, and functional. I'm proud of how it turned out, and I'm excited for it to be launched!
The South Burnaby Neighbourhood House (SBNH) in an organization that provides programs and other services to individuals and families in Burnaby, British Columbia. Three other students and myself reached out to SBNH to volunteer to redesign and rebuild their existing website. We were able to create an online experience that better represents the approachability and personality of their organization, and that is easy for admins to maintain.
This project contained everything from content gathering to WordPress development, and from design to client relations. My roles on the team were Project Manager, and Technical Lead. I created documentation for the project, communicated with the client, and tracked our progress throughout. I also spearheaded WordPress development, and launched the site.
One of the main goals for this project was to deliver a site that would be easily maintainable by the client. To achieve this, we decided on building with the popular CMS, WordPress. Now the client is able to simply log in and create posts and upload photos. We've found that this has helped with the transition over to the client. Another goal was to reflect SBNH's attributes throughout the site: Welcoming, approachable, diverse. We were able to use eclectic and warm design that truly represents SBNH as an organization, while keeping the site clean and navigable.
We hit a few snags right out of the gate with the site (we were hacked!), but it was a great learning experience, and now the South Burnaby Neighbourhood House has a site that reflects who they are and will help them to better connect with their community!
Chab Dai Canada is a non-profit organization that focuses on issues of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation in Canada, Cambodia, and across the globe. I've designed and developed a WordPress site that is an outlet for them to educate a greater audience about the great work that they are doing.
Please take a moment to visit their site to learn about this important issue.
Hi. My name is Troy Tucker. I'm a UX Designer / Developer living, working, and studying in Vancouver. I'll be graduating from university this spring and am excited to discover what comes next! Being a hybrid designer/developer, I've had the opportunity to play a big role on some great projects and now I'd love to find a position where I could continue to contribute and sharpen those skills.
I'm really interested in the potential that technology has to better the human experience, especially in the education, healthcare, and social industries. I think that a "double bottom line" business plan holds massive potential.
When I'm not in front of my laptop you can probably find me running the trails of North Vancouver or exploring on my motorbike.
