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Breel

A freelance marketplace with mentoring, for Indonesia's beginner freelancers. I led a team of six to a working Android app in a month, as our Bangkit Academy capstone.

Client
Bangkit Academy capstone
Role
Team lead, Android developer and designer
When
May – Jun 2023
Breel's screens: projects, mentors, proposals and chat
  • Kotlin
  • Android
  • MVVM
  • Firebase
  • Express
  • PostgreSQL
  • Figma
Breel on GitHub

What it is

Breel connects beginner freelancers with entry-level projects and with experienced freelancers who mentor them for a monthly fee.

We started from a survey: 9 of the 16 people we asked who had tried freelancing had given up, and the research we read put the hardest part at the start, landing a first client.

My part

Bangkit Academy, run by Google, Gojek, Tokopedia and Traveloka, ends with a team capstone. I led ours as product manager, designed the app, and built it with one other Android developer, while two machine-learning and two cloud engineers built the rest.

Planning a month

The problem. Six people, three disciplines, no designer, and one month to a working app.

What I did.
  • Split the work into a shared plan with a daily meeting, and kept every task on one calendar.
  • Ran it in short agile cycles so the app, the models and the backend met in the middle.

What changed. More than 100 tasks closed in 30 days.

100+

tasks closed in 30 days

The team's May 2023 calendar of tasks and daily meetings
The team plan for May 2023.

Designing it

The problem. With no designer on the team, the app's look and flows were mine to make, fast.

What I did.
  • A style guide on Material 3: colour, type and navigation.
  • Wireframes for each flow, then high-fidelity screens for search, project and mentor details, proposals, chat, notifications and the profile.

What changed. A full design the two of us could build from without guessing.

Every high-fidelity screen of Breel, grouped by flow
The high-fidelity screens, grouped by flow.

Building it

The problem. The design had to become a working Android app in the time left.

What I did.
  • Built it natively in Kotlin with an MVVM structure, on Firebase and the team's Express and PostgreSQL backend.
  • Kept the team on one plan as the backend, the models and the app came together.

What changed. We shipped a working app on time, and I graduated from Bangkit with distinction, in the top 10% of the cohort.

Breel's wireframes for each flow
The wireframes the build started from.

Next project

Seru RoomSide project · Web app

Have a project in mind?

Tell me what you need built, web or mobile, design to backend. I will come back with a plan.

Hiring a software engineer?

I am open to full-time roles. Let’s talk about your team and the work.

Let’s Talk