Lumatic
Lumatic City Maps, walking and transit directions in photographs of the street. Redesign of the app for iOS and Android, plus the marketing and developer sites.
- Years
- 2012–2013
- Role
- Founding product designer
- Setup
- San Francisco company; I worked from Singapore
- Scope
- Mobile app redesign (iOS and Android), marketing site, developer site
- Platform
- iOS, Android, web
The company
By late 2011 Lumatic was working on getting around a city on foot. It announced an $800,000 seed round in February 2012. Its app, Lumatic City Maps, showed a route as a sequence of photographs, with the landmarks and places along the way, for walking and public transit.
When Apple Maps launched with iOS 6 on September 19, 2012, without transit directions, Lumatic City Maps was one of the third-party routing apps that filled the gap.
The work
I joined in June 2012 as founding product designer, after the company had become Lumatic. I worked from Singapore. I led the redesign of Lumatic City Maps for iOS and Android, and designed the company’s marketing and developer websites.
What carried over
Build on the platform’s own parts. I used pre-built libraries and UI patterns wherever they fit, and saved my effort for the few details a pedestrian app had to get right. A first version should not start with custom work.