We're looking for a passionate web/mobile app developer with 3+ years of experience and PHP in particular. Straight out of school with raw talent is fine. We are looking for an independent thinker, problem solver, and curious mind. You must be a strong team player looking for a challenge. We offer a casual work environment, flexible hours, nice people, and interesting projects. (We work with start-ups in the areas of geo-location, real-time-web, SaaS, mobile lifestyle, and data aggregation.)

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with design team to find optimal technology solutions
• Assist in delivering accurate project documentation and development specifications
• Design database schemas and databases
• Write clean and structured PHP code
• Work closely with QA Lead through testing/QA phases

Required Skills

• PHP 5
• PostGreSQL/MySQL
• HTML, CSS, XML

Additional preferred qualifications

• Zend Framework
• HTML5
• JavaScript
• Facebook Connect / API’s
• iOS/Android SDK
• Server Tech (BSD/UNIX)

Come on! Call or e-mail us.

Someone just asked me what I'm focused on right now. Answer: I'm mostly focused on social (graph) and geo-location on the consumer side. On app/product, I'm looking at innovation and disruption in transportation, education, health/wellness, and mobile transactions. I think The Locker Project from SF based Singly is interesting. I look at semantic web stuff that impacts transaction, commerce, and mobile/local. Advertisers have a lot of challenges ahead and tool companies that help buyers and sellers connect will have a bright future. There's just so much going on right now - it feels like 1999… but very different in that the opportunities and business models are real, the platforms and networks are established, and we've already told everyone what we will do when you let us (thank you TIVO, Netflix, and Google).

Are you awake?

Entrepreneur? Looking to make a difference? At Fabric, we're looking to solve problems and build useful digital products for people like you. We've shredded our marketing services and now we're 100% focused on product development. It's time we get together, don't you think?

We can help you with…

• Product/Market Fit: Minimum viable product builds for start-ups tackling problems in target verticals (web/mobile Alpha/BETA apps)
• Product development: Pivots and user acquisition strategy and execution
• Creative product and technology support: concept, design, and development services for brands and agencies that have incomplete teams or expertise

Let's do this!

Right now, we're working with several clients who are asking: Should we do a native (iOS or Android) mobile app or a mobile web app in HTML5?

Naturally, you'll always have to consider the business objectives such as experience, speed, and hardware feature advantages of native, but often the final decision comes down to budget. Curiously, we've found that a large portion of iPhone apps could have just been done in HTML5 and reach would have doubled. (I suppose iOS developers made the decision to go with what they know.) There are of course frameworks such as Appcelerator that allows native development and deployment to iOS, Android, and Blackberry, but such frameworks have natural limitations and may not work for your needs or turn out to be too expensive still.

For those of you on the fence, we found this to be a good primer on HTML5 vs Native mobile development. It gives you a fair idea of what the cost vs benefits are and it's a good framework for thinking about your priorities when making this choice.

Happy weekend!

Creative agencies such as advertising and design firms must deliver high-quality sites and apps on aggressive schedules for big brand clients. Unfortunately, agency teams often have limited technical expertise and few engineering resources. Agencies are driven by creative. They have amazing creative, art, and design teams. However, they seldom have deep technology experience and they often lack depth in software development. Driven primarily by creative marketing people, agencies seldom have creative technologists on staff and they struggle with technical documentation, process, and software development discipline.

This is why Fabric are the preferred development partner for agencies when they need to deliver social sites and apps for major brands. We add layers of expertise, skills, and proven execution ability to agencies in need. We've done it for Carmichael Lynch, David & Goliath, and even for interactive agencies such as Rocket XL.

We help agencies with technical expertise, writing functional specifications and UX documentation. We offer integrated development teams and our battle-tested process to deliver large scale social sites, complex API integrations and data aggregation solutions. Custom CMS builds or complete transition or integration of CMS solutions such as Silverstripe, Wordpress, and OneSite.

But most of all, the main reasons agencies hire Fabric is to make sure that important projects are delivered with top quality, on-time, and on-budget. Agencies smile. Clients are happy. That's what you want, right?

Relax. We would never ask that question. Why? We just don’t believe in writing business plans – especially not web or mobile products of any kind. The reasons are simple:

• Your plan will be full of assumptions. Most of which will be wrong.
• Any time you spend writing a plan is time that could be better spent working on your product or customer development.
• Even when you try to raise money, the plan doesn’t really make a difference to investors.
• Planning is not doing. That’s not good when you have limited time to spare (we all do).

A few other things we don't care about:

• A great logo doesn’t matter and neither does amazing visual design.
• Feature lists are – usually – boring. They don’t tell us much about how you think about what’s really important… and that is: who is the customer? Why does she really need your product? How are you planning to deliver a BETTER product?

So, what kind of documentation can be useful when you come see us? We like to see wireframes or concept drawings focused on the core user experience. So, if you are a “mobile coupon start-up” – we’d really love to see how you think about the core user experience. How does an actual customer move through the application? What are the exact steps you lead them through? How does your product clearly solve the problem? Those things are important to us.

It’s also nice to see the core business model – in visual format. All that stuff about how you will make money and some ideas on how you will convert customers.

Passionate entrepreneurs: Send us your napkin ideas. Let’s get to work!

It's been a rocket start to the year! Where to start…

Most important: New Fabric people: James Gregg joined our Product Group in LA and Elizabeth Lim joined us as Project Manager and task master extraordinaire. It's great to see the team growing!

We won the development work for Kia Optima Superbowl Interactive campaign which launched the week before Superbowl. The project was on a 5 week delivery time-line. This was a puzzle game with 5 releases in 5 days. Phew. Our development team in Las Vegas pulled it off, but it was a very stressful build. Many late nights. Ideally, not to be repeated ;o)

We recently finished a project for Disney and launched Figling a new consumer web start-up with loads of potential. Our teams in LA and Las Vegas are excited to be working on projects for Toyota and Yakult. Our Product Group in LA is working with Dubspot to develop and expand their online school.

Our Marketing Group helped get Dogasaur past 250,000 Facebook Fans and we're now gearing up for another IKEA campaign and a fresh Summer campaign for a consumer brand (can't talk about it yet).

We'd love to hear from you - give us a call!

Fabric Interactive is looking for a passionate web developer with 3+ years of web development experience and PHP in particular. We are looking for an independent thinker and curious mind. You must be a strong team player looking for a challenge. If you get excited about process, yet still have a strong imagination, we want to hear from you! We offer a casual work environment, flexible hours, nice people, and great clients.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with design team to find optimal technology solutions during Discovery phases
• Assist interactive team in delivering accurate project documentation and development specifications
• Design database schemas and databases
• Write clean and structured PHP code
• Work closely with QA Lead through testing/QA phases

Required Skills

• PHP 5
• PostGreSQL/MySQL
• HTML, CSS, XML

Additional preferred qualifications

• Zend Framework
• HTML 5
• JavaScript
• Facebook Applications/Connect
• Drupal
• iPhone / Android SDK
• Server Tech (BSD/UNIX)

If you’ve been looking for that perfect opportunity to take your skills to the next level, this is for you.

To apply, just e-mail erlend@fabricinteractive.com.

We are growing fast and looking for a User Experience Lead for our Los Angeles based team. You’ll be part of a small team working on web/mobile products and interactive projects. The User Experience Designer will be involved in all areas of the interactive development process. Your responsibilities will include working directly with clients on brainstorming, ideation, research, creating wireframes, producing complete screens, writing UX specifications, and leading our visual designers through execution.  This is a full-time position starting Feb 1st 2011.

More about you:

• Your experience has taught you that understanding the audience, the market, and the project framework is critical to delivering stand-out work. You’re amazing at taking an idea and developing it into something truly special. You know UX and UI inside out and you know when to follow rules and when to break them.
• For years, you’ve been working in the interactive industry learning and appreciating the value of team work. You can run a project by yourself, but you’d rather collaborate. You communicate as if your life depends on it.
• On past projects, you’ve been challenged and found ways to deliver quality on time and on budget. You’ve managed relationships with clients and team members and they have loved working with you.
• You’ve failed a few times. It’s part of the process. You keep pushing and changing and taking it all in stride. You love what you do. You’re an advocate for quality and you’re uncomfortable when you see work that is not up to your high standards.
• You get along with everyone. That is one of your key strengths. You can “speak” developer and designer and you know how to translate hard to understand language so that clients instantly get it.

Important experience you have:

• Proven experience working web and mobile products or social networking sites, preferably large-scale, dynamically driven ones.
• Proven experience defining, developing, and documenting UX design and interaction requirements/specifications
• Familiarity with HTML/DHTML, CSS, javascript and other web technologies and their inherent strengths and limitations as they relate to UX development
• Experience developing UI and interaction pattern libraries is a huge plus.
• A strong portfolio that demonstrates advanced skills in user experience design

If you’re looking for a challenge and have endless passion to bring every day – we might be the place for you!

• This is a contract-to-hire full-time position starting Feb 1st 2011.
• Location: Silverlake, Los Angeles (some telecommuting OK)
• Salary: $70k+ DOE, no benefits at the moment
• Apply by Resume and 3 URL’s to erlend@fabricinteractive.com

Continued from: Start-up Series (Part I): What we do for the start-up entrepreneurs that hire us

Last time, we talked a bit about what we do for entrepreneurs that come to us with an idea for a consumer web or mobile start-up. Today, we’ll quickly go through the process we use to get to BETA.

First, it’s important to remember that there are usually two challenges that most startups face when they start building their BETA.

1. Somewhat blurred product vision
2. Limited capital

Having blurred product vision is pretty common. This comes in many shapes and forms. For instance, we often see a fairly decent vision, but a long list of features. Parts of the product may have been worked out, but other key parts, such as the user experience is full of holes. This is OK. It is often the reason why entrepreneurs come to us in the first place.

Having limited capital is a given. Sometimes though, there are also limited resources available as an entrepreneur may not have the time available to put 100% into the startup and often is not familiar with the large work load that comes with starting something from ground up. This is where our process comes in handy.

The basic steps are:

1. Entrepreneur provides all documents to Fabric for review
2. Q&A session with entire team – including product leads, design, experience, marketing, and tech
3. Fabric will produce a high-level estimate (Scope of Work)
4. Entrepreneur Funds Project
5. Definition: Detailed definition is developed for the first release of the product
6. User Experience Design: Wireframes and Functional Specifications
7. UI Design: Making it look great!
8. AJAX (or Flash is you are crazy)
9. Development: Database and Programming
10. Hooking to 3rd parties (most web startups are full of API hooks)
11. Admin Tools and such
12. Deliver website or application on Staging Server
13. Testing & QA
14. Deliver Alpha or BETA website/app to Production Server
15. Deployment: Tell everyone you know about your amazing product!

This is the quick and dirty work flow. In some cases, we have to work hard on concept development while other times it's more a matter of focusing on key user experience challenges. There are two rules we always follow:

Keep it simple and focus on the one thing you have to get right for users

Get your BETA up fast!

Once the BETA is up, we start working on the Product / Market fit, which is really just all about user feedback loops and product iterations. In our experience, this is really the hard part, but it's also the fun part. There's nothing as exciting as getting real people to give you feedback on your invention!

Next time, we’ll look at what kind of documentation we are looking for when we start working with you (hint: it’s not your business plan).

Start-up Series (Part III): Where is your business plan?