This was a big project.
It started small enough. A system to print shelf tickets for a group of pharmacies. Of course, that had its own technical challenges. Not least of which was printing from a browser in such a way that it would be consistent with pre-printed and/or pre-perforated paper. We ended up developing an unobtrusive background application for windows that would handle communication with the printer, and a separate web system for creating the print jobs.
This expanded a lot. We built an entire visual editor for printible tickets with multiple dynamic labels and layouts of those labels. We also expanded the management side of the system to handle promotional periods and other forms of marketing. The idea became for marketing departments to create and upload assets and product pricing details, and the stores just had to log on and print what was relevant to them.
With nearly a thousand stores using the system, there was a lot of iteration around the UI/UX of the system, especially about making life easier for the store users. We also started handling support tickets and calls (myself included) in order to better assist the stores. This helped me put an emphesis on the UX design, as I got to know the kinds of people that were using the system (and designing things so I had less support tickets to attend do :P ).
Before I left, I was part of the management of the product as a whole, and was working on a big redesign and re-branding. Partially in an attempt to simplify the entire system, and to reach out to more non-pharmacy retail chains and outlets.
This was one of my favourite projects to work on, despite the frustrations. A cloud-based application for the Victorian Space Science Education Center (VSSEC), which would allow a class of secondary school children log in, be assigned various mission roles and run a simulated Mars Rover mission.
The kicker: students actually ended up controlling a physical rover robot that would drive around VSSEC's on-site Mars simulation area.
It was a technical challenge to run 12+ users concurrently viewing the same set of data, and issuing requests and instructions to each other. Data was partially plotted in advance, and partially randomised. There were also random events like dust storms or electromagnetic interference, which the students would have to cooperate and coordinate to overcome.
Plus the added technical challenge of interfacing with VSSEC's rover, as well as computer vision data to track its physical location on the ground. It would've been so much easier to simulate that data along with the rest, but you can't beat the coolness factor of driving a real robot and seeing the live feed from its camera.
Also, once development was almost complete, we recieved graphic designs from a design agency, which required a lot of re-working to the front-end to make it fit the final design. It ended up looking great, though.