Text logo says Tinacious Design
Text logo says Tinacious Design
Text logo says Tinacious Design
Text logo says Tinacious Design
Mobile app for Tattoo Artists to find clients

Mobile app for Tattoo Artists to find clients

A local tattoo shop in Canada hired me as their Tech Lead and primary developer for a new mobile app project. The app is geared towards tattoo artists and other body modification service providers (piercers, brow artists, scalp micro-pigmentation artists, etc.) The goal of the app is to help service providers and clients find each other. The app was designed by their in-house designer and my role was technical leadership and full stack development on the backend, the website, and Android.

Features of the Android app include:

  • Ability for service providers to post a service listing (opening). This functionality is similar to Kijiji or Craigslist but for tattoo artists and other body modification service providers
  • Allows service providers to create posts with multiple images. This functionality is similar to Instagram.
  • Ability for clients to find artists by service and location on the Find tab. Clients can provide their location or choose from suggested locations to find service providers near them or in a supported city
  • Ability for clients to follow artists via the “VIP” feature.
  • Ability for artists to send broadcast announcement messages to all of their followers. This feature was a rewrite of a feature that another developer took several months to deliver but hadn’t quite worked as desired. At the time of writing this post, it is not live yet.
  • Full stack features to support an invite-only artist onboarding flow, allowing service providers to only be allowed to sign up if they receive a one-time use link by another service provider on the platform. This exclusivity feature was specifically requested by the client to limit access to the app.
  • Push notification configuration allows Android users to customize which notification categories they’d like to receive notifications for, if any.
  • Allow users to customize their profiles including profile image, name, username, profile details, and pronouns
  • Notification feed for clients and artists to stay in the loop with activity in the app (broadcasts, new posts, listings, etc.)

Technical features:

  • Location-aware search queries to allow resources to be indexed by location and queried based on distance from a provided location, e.g. 50 km away. This allows users to choose a city and find service providers within a specific range of that city.
  • Deep linking functionality on Android (verified app links) and iOS (universal links). This was implemented to support linking into posts, listings, and to support the exclusive invite-only artist onboarding flow.
  • Push notifications functionality to alert artists when they have a new follower, as well as to alert followers when an artist they follow has created a new post, a new listing, or sends a broadcast message.
  • Google Maps Platform implementation to support auto-complete lookup and rendering of maps

As the Technical Lead of the project, I owned the development of and was the primary contributor on the backend API’s, native Android app, website, and oversaw the development of the iOS app. I led a team of approximately 2-3 developers. I worked with the client to architect the solutions from a full stack perspective to find the best solution from a wide angle.

  • System Design from a full stack perspective.
  • Implemented CI/CD workflows (Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment) to support automated testing and deployment for both the Android app, the backend services, and the website
    • Automated deployments for the backend services and website
    • Automated deployments to Firebase App Distribution on Android
    • Semi-automated deployments to the Google Play Store including automated code signing
  • Documentation and best practices: As the Tech Lead, I wrote best practices docs to support the other developers on the team. Documentation includes both manually- and technically-generated diagrams to help onboard developers.
  • I created code generation tooling to remove the need to write boilerplate, and encourage consistent patterns.
  • Overseeing the implementation of the iOS rewrite in Swift UI
  • Service uptime monitoring to ensure production apps stay up and the team could respond to incidents
  • Hiring developers to implement chat, iOS

I implemented all of the above-mentioned features myself, usually as the sole contributor. There are other features in the app that I did not develop: chat and the old broadcast functionality that leveraged chat, written by another developer that implemented a third-party service. I needed to rewrite the latter as it was not something that was suitable for the long-term.

Technologies I used for this project:

  • Ruby on Rails
  • Node.js
  • native Android with Kotlin
  • Postgres
  • MongoDB
  • Vue.js
  • various API’s

When I left the project, the app on the Google Play Store had a 5-star average review.

Note: Featured artist lauren_epsom is a fabricated artist profile (think lorem ipsum). User, listing and post data is fabricated or uses image attribution. Images from Unsplash by photographers Taylor Harding, Daniel Gomez, Allef Vinicius, Annie Spratt, Clem Onojeghuo, Dylan Sauerwein, Jasmin Chew, JJ Jordan, Nathalie Stimpfl, Steven Erixon, Stories Ink, Seyi Ariyo. Images from Pexels by photographers Prime Cinematics, Chris F.

🚀 Launched April 2022

  • Android
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Back-end Development
  • Front-end Development
  • Content Management Systems
  • CSS
  • Dev Ops
  • Kotlin
  • Mobile Development
  • Responsive Web Design
3 screenshots of the native Android app I built. The first screenshot shows a tattoo artist's profile with a circular profile image, 3 openings, number of followers, and buttons for managing their profile. It also includes pictures of tattooed clients. The 2nd screenshot has a picture of an ad (opening) with a title, description, date, and a featured image of a woman in a yellow cami tank top, with coloured sleeve tattoos on both arms, adjusting her sunglasses. The 3rd screenshot is a 2 by 4 grid of square images, all of people with tattoos. Images are mostly of women.

Mobile app for Tattoo Artists to find clients

Screenshot of a service listing in the app. Full-width image at the top shows the left side profile of a woman with brown skin and a sleeve tattoo, wearing a sleeveless shirt. She has long wavy dark hair and is wearing rings on her middle and ring fingers. Below the header image shows the fabricated artist lauren_epsom who has red hair and sunglasses. The title of the listing "Full sleeve or nah." The date is August 31 at 12pm. Post body: I have a last minute opening. Come get that tattoo you've been thinking about. Price $1337. Time: 4 hours.

Tattoo artists can create listings to advertise their openings for specific dates

Front view of a white woman with sleeve tattoos, blonde hair, dark reddish brown lipstick, and a ring septum piercing. Woman is from a stock photo image by Clem Onojeguo. The image takes up the top half of the screen. A purple heart is filled showing that the user liked the photo. Artist's username is lauren_epsom, a fabricated artist.

Client users can view, like, and save content published by artists

Screenshot of the post view. The post image features the back of the head of a white male model with a short haircut who has tattoos on the back of his head and neck. He has his hands touching the back of his head and you can see his tattoos and rings on his hands. Stock photo by Steven Erixon

Client users can view posts that artists create

Screenshot of an artist's profile which includes a 2 by 4 grid of square images. Images are of people with tattoos. There's a purple floating action button with a plus symbol on it, allowing the artist to add more content.

Artists can feature their work on their profile

Screenshot of an artist's profile which includes a 2 by 4 grid of square images. Images are of people with tattoos. There's a purple floating action button with a plus symbol on it, allowing the artist to add more content.

Artists can feature their artwork on their profiles

Posts in a layout very similar to Instagram with a heart and ribbon icon for liking and saving. Posts are from fabricated tattoo artist lauren_epsom.

Feed view of a client user's feed

Posts in a layout very similar to Instagram with a heart and ribbon icon for liking and saving. Posts are from fabricated tattoo artist lauren_epsom.

Feed view of a client user's feed

Service listing view. Top section has an image of the artist's work. Below the image includes listing details like the artist's username, their service, a catchy title, the date, and other information

Artists can post ads to try to fill a spot in their calendar

Screen for the artist's profile view including their full name, username, how many listings they have, their followers, and whether they're taking new clients. Also includes bio and booking preferences, as well as post images in a 2-up grid.

Artists can manage their profile and whether they're taking new clients or not

Screen with a bottom tab navigation on the tab that says Openings which shows a feed of listings with their title and date

The Openings screen allows users to look for artists providing the service they're looking for.

Artist highlight card shows the artist's username, profile image, and the 3 latest images they posted, and a button to get notified about their content

Users can browse for artists and get notified when they post content

Screen with a bottom tab navigation on the tab that says Openings which shows a feed of listings with their title and date

The Openings screen allows users to look for artists providing the service they're looking for.

A notification feed in dark mode

Users can see a notification feed of all information relevant to them including updates by their favourite artists

A notification feed in light mode

Users can see a notification feed of all information relevant to them including updates by their favourite artists

Screenshot of a the website in mobile Safari which shows a listing title, date, location and service. The bottom section includes links to the app store listings for Android and iOS.

The website supports artist profiles and listings via deep links including deferred deep links, allowing new users to download the app and see the content artists share