To facilitate the integration of multiple identity providers and to streamline the development process I designed the architecture of a single-sign on (SSO) integration layer.

Tech Stack

The integration layer was developed using the open-source framework Laravel. The application is automatically deployed to the production environment using GitLab pipelines.

Project Outcome

The integration layer acts as a common interface between a proprietary legacy application and a wide-range of identity providers. First, this streamlined the development process by separating the implementation details of the respective protocols for interaction with the identity providers (e.g. OpenID Connect) from the existing business application logic. Second, it provides the starting point for further identity related integrations such as automated user provisioning.

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For my Master's thesis at the University of Zurich I've built a smartphone app that helps people analyse and foster better sleep hygiene routines.

Design Process

The app was designed using a double-diamond design process incorporating user feedback gathered based on wireframes and a UI/UX prototype created with Figma.

Tech Stack

After the initial design phase the app was built using React Native and the Expo framework. The anonymised data was stored in Google's Firebase that acted as a backend for the app. The app was distributed using Apple's TestFlight program and was monitored using Sentry to capture on-device exceptions.

Project Outcome

A two-week user study with 14 participants was conducted to test the feasibility of the approach and to evaluate the app’s impact. A quantitative analysis of the usage data captured in the app and a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted at the end of the study was performed. The results suggest that the app was helpful and supported participants in adopting the new sleep hygiene behaviours. The thesis was graded 5.75 out of 6.

More about the thesis can be found on the website of the Human Aspects of Software Engineering Lab.

For my Master's project at the University of Zurich Sebastian Richner and I designed and developed a habit tracking application for MacOS with a corresponding web app.

Tech Stack

The web app was built using the Ruby on Rails full-stack framework and was deployed on Heroku. It provided users with an interface to manage their goals and corresponding habits and displayed a dashboard to analyse the collected data. Furthermore, it provided REST endpoints to the tracking companion app that was built using Electron. The webapp used Mailgun to deliver reminder e-mails to its users. To monitor the uptime and the scheduled events (e.g. sending of reminder events) the application health monitoring Honeybadger was used.

Project Outcome

The software solution was evaluated during a three week user study with 11 participants which revealed that users are generally interested in establishing habits for improving their performance and well-being at work. Furthermore, most aspects of the solution such as the reflections and the self-reports were considered helpful. The project was graded with grade 6 out of 6.

For the swiss online shop babytuch.ch a tailor-made shipment and return management solution was built that integrates with the API of the Swiss Post to generate shipping and return labels.

Tech Stack

The existing web shop is running on Wordpress and WooCommerce, thus the logistics integration was developed as a Wordpress plugin. To streamline the development workflow, the building and packaging of the Wordpress plugin was automated using GitHub actions. Furthermore, a distinct staging environment was setup to test the plugin and its integration with the Swiss Post REST API without interfering with the production environment.

Project Outcome

The shipping and return process was successfully digitised to include only a minimal amount of human intervention. The progress of the fulfilment and shipping process is tracked using QR codes that are scanned by the logistics provider. The automated generation of shipping and return label PDFs as well as packaging instructions for the logistics provider proofed to be an effective way to reduce manual labour in the process.

I designed the user interface for a smartphone app that facilitates the mobilisation of voters in Switzerland and allows the reporting of vandalised or demolished voting posters.

Design Process

The user interface was designed based on an initial requirements workshop with the client during which core functionalities and user flows were specified. The design was turned into an interactive prototype using Figma which allowed the testing and refinement of core user interactions flows (e.g. swiping left / right to mark contacts as potential voters).

Project Outcome

The design was handed over to a team of iOS developers that used the prototype as a foundation for the user interface. The app was later released to the iOS app store. Unfortunately, the project was shut down by the client due to a lack of interest / engagement and the app has been removed from the app store.

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The faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics and the oecAlumni association of the University of Zurich jointly launched a new alumni platform. I supported the process as an IT consultant through the initial requirements phase, the evaluation of multiple software vendors, the customisation and parametrisation, and finally the roll-out of the solution.

In a first step the requirements of the faculty and the association were elicited during multiple workshops involving all stakeholders. Essential processes were modelled using BPMN and redesigned to facilitate the digitisation and automation of previous manual tasks. Subsequently, multiple vendors and software solutions were identified and evaluated. This was followed by a second requirements phase during which the software vendor was included to refine the existing business processes based on the capabilities of the software solution. During the implementation phase, the software was thoroughly tested and the design and layout were adjusted to match the CI/CD guidelines of both the university and the association. Finally, the software was rolled out in a two-step phase that consisted of an internal pre-launch and a final public launch to all existing alumni.

The goal of wit.app was to create an online tool that allows teachers and students to create educational resources collaboratively and to enable sharing of learning materials amongst colleagues. In short: GitHub for teachers.

The Tech Stack

Wit.app consisted of a frontend built using React and a backend providing REST endpoints built using the open source PHP framework Laravel. The frontend was deployed as a single-page app using AWS S3. The backend was deployed using AWS ElasticBeanstalk app environments that consisted of EC2 instances with a corresponding RDS database.

The deployment to the production and staging environments was automated using a CI/CD pipeline running on Jenkins. The pipeline ran integration tests for all API endpoints and e2e tests (using Cypress) for crucial frontend interactions (e.g. sign-up / registration) before the final deployments were made. The pipeline was configured to run automatically when git commits to the main branch were made.

Rollbar was used to monitor the production environment and to alert the team in cases of exceptions.

View it in Action

Watch a demonstration of the tool below

My co-founder Beat Knaus and I created an online platform for learning high school level German. The exercises and the functionality were designed in close collaboration with teachers and students to provide an engaging and interactive learning experience. Overall the platform provides more than 5000 different exercises across 100 different topics.

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Tech Stack

The platform runs on the open-source CMS Wordpress to facilitate the authoring of learning material. The learning platform functionality was developed as a Wordpress plugin that was developed using PHP's object-oriented-programming features to provide suitable abstractions (e.g. models, controllers) for the complex additional functionality. The exercises make heavy use of JavaScript to provide an interactive experience. The deployment process was automated using GitHub actions. To facilitate the development and the onboarding of new developers, the local environment was containerised using Docker.

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Project Outcome

Since 2015 the online platform was used by thousands of students in Switzerland that collectively solved more than 1'000'000 exercises. The tool is still actively used by multiple high schools.

The platform can be accessed at begriffen.ch