iBUILD
Role
Co-Founder, Chief Innovation Officer
Description
As a UX expert and product development leader at iBUILD, I was responsible for designing and implementing all high-fidelity wireframes and overseeing all product development activities. I led a team of 15 professionals, including engineers, testers, and product managers, while also designing all schemas and working closely with the backend team to define over 450 endpoints that support various applications. Additionally, I oversaw operational activities for the company, including budgeting forecasts and pitch deck creation for investors. I also managed partnerships with international organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, Shelter Afrique, and Mastercard Labs. Overall, my role at iBUILD encompassed a broad range of responsibilities in product development, UX design, team management, operational planning, and partnership management.
Timeline
Co-Founder 2016-PRESENT (CIO 2016-2020)
Responsibilities
UX Designer, DB Architect, Operations Manager, & Product Manager
Resources Managed
3 PHP Engineers, 3 Native Android Engineers, 2 REACT Engineers, 3 Testers, 2 Junior Product Managers, 2 Full Stack Engineers
Website
Platform
Front End
The iBUILD front-end mobile application was a native app primarily developed using Kotlin and managed through a single repository. The mobile app was used by Developers, Homeowners, Contractors, Workers, Suppliers, and Architects.
There were many different portals that were developed using REACT, which functioned as summary dashboards, web versions of the mobile application, or a field submission form. These were managed across three different repositories, each with production and UAT versions.
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​The iBUILD USSD App was built in PHP using Laravel and delivered using the Africastalking gateway. There were production and UAT versions of the web server. The app was used by workers to find jobs, purchase insurance, and manage timesheet payments.
Backend
The backend that served data to our front-end applications was PHP-based and had test and production versions hosted on AWS. It was set up on autoscaling and load balancers to handle user traffic, such as users in Puerto Rico uploading up to 800 images at a time. Postman was used to manage endpoints/APIs, of which over 490 were documented.
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The backend RDS DB was a MySQL AWS Aurora DB with seven environments, including three compatible with the production server (Production, Sandbox, and Demo), three compatible with the test server (UAT, staging, development), and a seventh environment for common tables called iBUILD services. The first six environments had mirrored table structures with 250+ tables each, while iBUILD services had roughly 30+ tables. Data structures were automatically documented and visualized using Lucidchart.
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All documents and images uploaded to iBUILD were stored in AWS S3 buckets, with metadata managed within the MySQL RDS. EC2 was leveraged to ensure that S3 buckets could scale as needed. For authentication and chat, Google Firebase was used.
Security, Administration, & Analytics
Security for the platform was managed using AWS VPC security groups for all applications, following EC2 suggested implementations from AWS. Tableau software was used as the main analytics tool, reading directly into the RDS using VPN secure connections.
Several management tools were used to ensure code quality, ease of error resolution, and streamlined product management. BitBucket was used as the repository manager, CircleCI for automated deployments, Sentry for error logging, Codacy for code quality checks, Jira and Confluence for overall product management, and Slack as the primary communication tool. Designs were scoped out using Adobe XD to build interactive prototypes with diagramed data structures in Lucidchart ERD diagrams.
Platform Summary
iBUILD is a mobile and web-based platform that serves as a trusted community marketplace for individuals seeking project construction loans, rated contractors, and material suppliers. It allows users to make payments tied to verified completed work from a single platform via their mobile phone. The platform is designed to enable small-scale construction based on individual needs by connecting users to financing and technical support services. Overall, the iBUILD ecosystem of applications empowers people to build their homes with ease and convenience.
