iOS/Android Apps for goTenna

I am incredibly proud of the design of the native goTenna apps for iOS and Android. Not because they were world-changing in design, but because of their simplicity and accessibility to users. Our job was not to re-invent messaging and location services, but to simply provide them in places where they normally wouldn’t be possible.

So from the get-go my design criteria was to leverage as many messaging and location design tropes as possible. If we could make the application look and feel like a blend between the two leading messaging apps, iMessage and What’sApp, as well as the leading location services app, Google Maps, it would be intuitive and accessible. As critical as our hardware was, the labor there would be rendered meaningless if the customer-facing UI/UX was something confusing.

Our biggest challenges were in designing the experience in a way that educated regular consumers about the realities and limitations of RF technology, what was happening under the hood within a complex mesh-network, as well battling with Bluetooth-LE technology that at the time of our launch was still relatively nascent.

In the end our app got rave reviews from leading publications like PC Mag, Outside Magazine, and overall the product as a whole, hardware + software, won numerous product design awards.