Shawn Frank shawn-frank

Hello there, Shawn here

My name is Shawn Frank and I am a native iOS software engineer based in Brisbane, Australia. I have over 8 years of experience in crafting bespoke, scalable, and reliable iOS applications that deliver world-class user experiences. I currently work as a software engineer at Nine Entertainment.

📫 Reach me at [email protected]

📄 Interested in my experience? Review my resume

Client Projects

`Shaman Pitch Presentation App`

Shaman is a presentation platform that enables its customers to close more deals and was founded by Maurice Van Leeuwen from the Netherlands. Maurice visited me in Dubai back in 2014 to work on Shaman and we started with a team of just 3 people. I was initially incharge of designing the UX, developing the iOS app and managing the development. By 2016, Shaman started gaining momentum with more customers and I helped Maurice expand the Shaman team so that we could move faster. Here were some of the project highlights:

The app was developed in Objective C
Key Apple Frameworks: Multipeer for screen share, CoreData, UICollectionView and FileManager to name a few
3rd Party Frameworks: AFNetworking, Crashlytics, Sentry, SocketCluster, GCD Web Server
Other interesting technology: GraphQL
Designed the UI / UX for the first 3 years of the app
Developed several custom controls and UI elements
Managed a few backend developers for the first 3 years before helping Maurice grow the team

Learn more about Shaman from their website or check out the iOS app here.

Alternatively, you could watch the video below to learn more about Shaman and get a glimpse of the iOS app in action.

Intro_to_Shaman.mp4

`Spuble - Real Life Speech Bubbles`

Spuble is a project that I hold quite close to my heart for several reasons. First, it made a real impact in the lives of senior citizens who lost their hearing ability over time. Second, I had the chance to collaborate with some talented people over at Memac Ogilvy. And last, but not least, the app won an award at the the Dubai Lynx Festival in 2017 in the category of innovative technology. Here was how I was involved:

Developed the app in Swift
Used AutoLayout to scale the app for iPhones & iPads
Leveraged localization to enable the app to support English & Arabic
Integrated Nuance's Dragon Speech to Text SDK
Worked on the UX R&D with Gary (Art Director at Ogilvy) for 8 months to make the app as simple to use as possible
Pitched the app with Gary at the Dubai Lynx Festival

The app is no longer on the store, so you can learn more about it from the video below.

Spuble.mp4

`Harman Kardon`

Harman Kardon stores are built with demonstration capabilities for their entire range of products, however, they wanted to enhance this experience so I was commissioned to work on this project. After several discussions with the Harman team, and their media partners, Mood Media GCC, there was a consensus that an iPad app which not only informed prospective buyers about their range of speakers, but also all allowed them to test drive any speaker that was on display. Here was what I got up to while working on this project:

Designed and developed a delightful user experience that was on brand, intutitive and engaging
Developed the iPad app using Swift
Key technology used was AVPlayer, UIKit, FileManager and AlamoFire
Realm was the database of choice to store app related content and user interaction data
Managed a backend developer on this project who was responsible for developing a CMS and Dashboard
Helped with deploying the app across multiple iPads in different stores across Dubai

The app is not on the App Store, however, I can give you more details if required in person.

`Zabeel Ladies Club`

Zabeel Ladies Club (ZLC) has a world class health & fitness facility and their digital precense follows suit for the most part, however, their mobile app was not on brand. I was hired by ZLC to refresh their existing mobile app in terms of user experience and functionality and here were some of my responsibilities:

Upgrade the user journeys and user experience of the current ZLC mobile app
Develop the iOS app from scratch using Swift
Program custom UI interface elements, controls and interactions
Integrated with MindBody
Integrated with Mux.com to achieve video streaming on demand
Led a remote team consisting of a UI Designer, Backend Engineer and an Android Engineer while developing the iOS app

The app was handed over to the ZLC team to continue and is currently undergoing QA tests since I was relocating to Australia, however I can share more details about the project in person if required.

Indie Projects

`PanoStory`

I met a UX designer / product manager named Alex Cox from San Francisco via UpWork when he commissioned me to develop Readers - an app that used an iPhone's camera as a magnifying glass. We enjoyed working together and once readers was launched in early 2021, we started building PanoStory. We found that user's had no easy way to share their Panoramas without cutting them up and so PanoStory converts any panoramic photo into a story-ready video to showcase the beauty of your shots. Here were some of my responsibilities:

Work with Alex and another designer to finalize the UX of the app
Developed Pano in Swift with several custom UI elements and user experiences
The complete iterface was developed programatically using AutoLayout without storyboards
Integrated PhotoKit to automatically sync Panoramas from the user's gallery
Leveraged AVFoundation & CoreAnimation to convert panoramas into videos
Integrated StoreKit so that users could pay to remove ads
Leveraged Firebase for Push Notifications, Crashlytics and Event Tracking

Check out PanoStory on the App Store.

`Reliable Radio`

Reliable Radio is the brainchild of an AWS solutions architect named Dawid Gatti. Dawid was the product lead while I was developing an iOS SDK for Banyan (see above). Dawid is based in Italy and often goes for long drives in the mountains where his radio and streaming apps often disconnect due the network being unreachable at some parts. Once discounnected, these apps would not reconnect back which required Dawid to restart the app while driving. Dawid hired me to build Reliable Radio to solve this problem and here are some highlights of the project:

Implemented auto reconnect by observing AVPlayer's streaming notification and network rechability notifications
Added CarPlay support which was something I had to learn while building this app
Made use of CoreData with CloudKit to sycnrhonize user's saved radio stations across all their devices
Connected with the iTunes / Apple Music API in order to display the currently playing song's artwork

The project is no longer live, you can learn more about Reliable Radio on Product Hunt.

`Barakah Coupons`

Barakah Coupons is a promo code app for online shops that I launched in 2021 with 3 friends. We are currently working on adding a feature to support offline deals. Here is what I was involved in while working on Barakah Coupons:

Plan the user experience of the app along with a UI designer
Develop the app using Swift
The complete iterface was developed programatically using AutoLayout without storyboards
Achieved English & Arabic support using localization
Leveraged Firebase for Push Notifications, Crashlytics and Event Tracking
Managed a backend developer to develop a CMS and dashboard for us

Check out Barakah Coupons on the App Store.

A few words from some of my clients on Upwork

Languages, Technology & Tools

`Programming Languages`

Swift (Primary)
SwiftUI (Primary)
Objective C (Primary)
C# (Working experience)
Core PHP (Working experience)
C++ (Working experience)
Java (Working experience)
SQL (Working experience)

`Databases`

MYSQL
SQLITE
Realm
CoreData

`Apple Frameworks I have worked with`

AVFoundation
CarPlay
Combine
CoreAnimation
CoreData standalone and with CloudKit
CoreLocation
Apple Maps
FileManager
Multipeer Connectivity
PDFKit
PhotoKit
StoreKit
UIKit
WebKit

`3rd Party services I have worked with`

Firebase
Google Maps
Google Places
Google Ad Mob
Payment gateways like Stripe & BrainTree
RevenueCat
MindBody
Snowplow Analytics
Piano
Sentry
Instabug
Qualtrics
Intercom
MUX video streaming
Twilio
MX.com
VGS (Very Good Security)

`Other Tools & Technology I've worked with`

XCode
Git with Github and Bitbucket
CocoaPods & SPM
RXSwift
GraphQL, REST and SOAP API integration
Websocket development
Swift Package Manager (SPM)
Charles / Proxyman
Wiremock
Postman
Figma
Adobe XD
Invision
JIRA
Trello

Connect with me