Ryan Colgin

A fast-turnaround iOS and Android event app for New Orleans’ annual festival of light, art, and technology.

LUNA Fête is a free public festival that brings light-based art, projection mapping, installations, and interactive experiences into downtown New Orleans. This app project supported one of the festival’s early mobile experiences, helping attendees explore installations, artists, event details, maps, and sponsor information during the event.

I designed the app screens for iOS and Android on a tight deadline so the experience could be available in time for the festival. The design included a home screen and navigation, an artwork listing with images, individual artwork pages with details, artist information, viewing times, an updated map view, and a partners/sponsors section.

The app reached roughly 1,900 unique users during an event with an estimated 35,000–40,000 attendees. Usage included more than 1,600 iOS users and 250 Android users, with activity peaking during the festival. Engagement also included hundreds of artwork-related interactions, including “Viewed It” clicks during and after the event.

The project was quick, practical, and event-driven: get people the information they needed, make the installations easier to explore, and give the festival a usable mobile companion in time for launch.

Note: Designed while working for LookFar.

A campaign-style website with parallax sections, animated atmosphere, and recipe-focused content.

This project was designed during the height of parallax-heavy campaign websites, where scrolling, atmosphere, motion, and layered visuals were a major part of the experience.

I designed website sections that used sweeping backgrounds, billowing smoke effects, layered movement, and visual moments built around the Fireball brand. Some sections included video backgrounds, including drink-pour footage, while others focused on recipes, product content, and branded storytelling.

A major part of the site was a recipe system for drinks and food pairings, using color, imagery, and structured layouts to make recipes easier to browse and visually connect back to the brand. I also contributed lightly to a related mobile game app, though the website design was the primary focus shown here.

Note: Designed while working for Zehnder Communications.

A destination app helping visitors explore beaches, local places, weather, water safety, and trip details.

This iOS and Android app project was created for Visit South Walton to help travelers explore the area’s beaches, restaurants, shops, and visitor resources.

The app went through a full product design process, moving from whiteboard planning and low-fidelity wireframes into Balsamiq flows and higher-fidelity mockups. The experience included a home screen with weather and beach flag conditions, water-safety information, sunrise and sunset timing, beach details, places to eat and shop, favorites, and discovery tools similar to the beach-finder experience.

The app was built and launched, and the project remains a strong example of destination-focused mobile UX, travel planning, local discovery, and practical visitor information design.

Note: Designed while working for Zehnder Communications.

A redesign concept for an event platform supporting promoters, events, tickets, and attendee discovery.

This project explored a redesigned event booking platform where promoters could create and manage events, while attendees could discover events and purchase tickets through a cleaner web experience.

The redesign effort included refreshing the visual direction, organizing the product structure, creating wireframes for key paths, and designing higher-fidelity screens for browsing events, viewing event details, selecting tickets, and moving through the purchase flow. The work also included design-system-style elements to help unify typography, buttons, navigation, and repeated interface patterns.

Although the redesign did not ultimately launch, the project helped define a clearer direction for how the platform could support both event managers and ticket buyers.

Designed while working at LookFar.

A product design exercise for managing surveys, reviewing responses, and identifying research that needed attention.

This dashboard concept was created as a product design exercise, focused on helping teams manage customer and market research surveys.

The concept explored how a survey analytics tool could make it easier to see which surveys were active, which needed attention, and where feedback or results suggested adjustments. The experience included dashboard reporting, survey status visibility, demographic tagging, survey creation, and the ability to duplicate or edit surveys without starting from scratch.

My work focused on organizing the core workflow, sketching early concepts, and designing interface screens that made survey management and research feedback easier to scan, compare, and act on.

A mobile app helping people find local seafood, browse recipes, and learn how to cook Gulf Coast catches.

The Gulf Coast Seafood Finder app helped users find local seafood and explore recipes tied to Gulf seafood products.

I designed the app experience from early sketchbook wireframes through higher-fidelity screens. The design included a custom home screen, seafood finder form, results/listing views, recipe listings, individual recipe pages, and filtering tools to help users narrow recipes by seafood type or cooking interest.

The project combined local food promotion, mobile discovery, recipe browsing, and practical utility. It was part of a broader effort to help people find, cook, and support Gulf Coast seafood.

Note: Designed while working for Zehnder Communications.

A public-facing seafood website designed around local stories, videos, recipes, and product discovery.

This website extended the Gulf Coast Seafood experience into a richer web presence focused on local seafood, recipes, videos, and education.

I designed the website interface, including the structure for featured videos, seafood stories, recipe browsing, filters, and recipe-detail pages. The recipe system required careful layout and filtering work so users could browse seafood dishes, narrow results, and find useful cooking information.

The site was built in-house and supported a larger campaign effort to promote Gulf Coast seafood, highlight local content, and help users move from interest to cooking and buying.

Note: Designed while working for Zehnder Communications.

A prototype interface for browsing plant information and care guidance tied to a hydroponics concept.

EarthPrime was a prototype for a plant-care and reference experience connected to a hydroponics system concept.

The idea began with more ambitious identification and plant-care interactions, including the possibility of recognizing or looking up plants. As the technical direction became clearer, the concept shifted toward a reference-style resource database where users could browse plants, plant care requirements, and understand how to maintain them.

My work focused on interface exploration, screen design, and shaping the product into a more realistic plant information experience.

Note: Designed while working for LookFar.

An ecommerce website for a New Orleans furniture brand focused on collections, product detail pages, and custom furniture shopping.

This project was designed for a high-end furniture company offering historically inspired pieces, raw furniture collections, and customizable home furnishings.

I worked with the founder to understand the brand, product structure, customer needs, and how shoppers would browse collections, compare pieces, and learn more about materials, finishes, shipping, and customization options. The site needed to feel refined and image-driven while still supporting the practical details customers need before purchasing furniture online.

My work included wireframing the core pages and designing the homepage, shop experience, collection browsing, product detail pages, lookbook areas, and supporting navigation. Product pages were designed to support image galleries, dimensions, finish options, product descriptions, care/spec information, shipping details, related pieces, and add-to-cart behavior.

The homepage emphasized large photography, collection entry points, and a more editorial presentation of the brand, while the shop and product pages focused on helping customers move from inspiration to purchase.

The work brought together ecommerce UX, product storytelling, visual design, and detailed product-page hierarchy to help customers browse, compare, and feel confident purchasing customizable furniture online.

A skincare product website with category-based color systems, product pages, and custom HTML/CSS.

DermAware is a skincare product line created by a biochemist, with products organized across different skincare needs and categories.

I designed the site’s visual system, including a category-based color approach that carried through section headings, product areas, and supporting styles. I designed the product line pages, individual product pages, and broader website interface to make the product categories easier to navigate.

I also built the site’s HTML and CSS myself, working with an engineer to connect the templates and styles into the ASP-driven site structure. This project combined visual design, product organization, front-end development, and practical collaboration with engineering.

Note: Designed while working for Design the Planet.

A mobile product concept for outdoor fitness parks, workout guidance, user progress, and park analytics.

FitLot is a New Orleans-founded nonprofit focused on making outdoor fitness more accessible through free public fitness parks, guided classes, and community activation.

This app concept explored how a mobile experience could support both people using the parks and administrators managing park activity. The user-facing side included an equipment library, workout instructions, video-based exercise guidance, profile and progress tracking, achievements, and suggested workouts. The admin-facing side explored park analytics, usage trends, demographic information, popular equipment, peak usage times, and directory-style management tools.

My work included early whiteboard wireframes, product flow exploration, and higher-fidelity mobile screens for the equipment library, exercise detail pages, user profile summary, and analytics dashboard. The concept helped frame how FitLot could extend the physical park experience into a digital companion for learning, tracking, and understanding community use.

The project was a prototype and pitch concept, but it remains a useful example of health, fitness, civic infrastructure, mobile UX, and data-focused interface design.

Note: Designed while working for Zehnder Communications.