Meet the Founders: Cristiano
Many in the Sonar community have expressed an interest in the past work of our lead designer and CIO, Cristiano. That interest has inspired us to launch a series focusing on the background of the founding team. We will begin with Cristiano!
Cristiano founded Actions in 2012 and served as CEO of the company for the following 5 years. In addition to the duties of directing a burgeoning tech start-up, he also was responsible for the UX/UI/SFX design and development of the product.
The product, Quadro, featured a programmable UI with customizable buttons, making hotkeys and shortcuts easy to use. Aimed at improving accessibility, increasing productivity and ease of use — with an additional focus on the emotional aspects, pleasure of use and fun.
Much like the Sonar Platform, Quadro featured levels of customization and complexity suited for the working professional. However, on the surface was deceivingly simple to use for all levels of technological fluency. Ready made templates for most software came pre-loaded and did not require configuration or technological know-how to use. Cristiano brings this same ethos of design to Sonar. Easy to use for a beginner, but powerful and complex under the hood for even the most advanced user.
An example of the powerful potential of Quadro was the ability to pack a small application into a single button. In doing so, creating potentially infinite chains of commands by combining shortcuts, native and web-app actions, logic with code snippets, API calls, and much more — all invoked with a single tap.
In designing the custom metric and event based alert chains for the Sonar Platform, Cristiano draws on this previous experience of building similar features into Quadro.
Simplicity, ease of use, and innovation is what our Chief Innovation Officer excels at. The video below gives a brief overview of how Quadro encapsulates these concepts and simplifies any computer-based workflow.
Below is a demonstration of the “fluid gestures” feature of Quadro, enabling a user to navigate folders with a simple swipe.
The “Actions Gallery”, where you could download ready-to-use workflow automations for your interfaces.
Quadro running on a tablet connected to a PC.
He was awarded Editors Choice, Best App of the Year (2012), and several others shown below. In addition to being awarded several times over, he received high acclaim from fellow professionals in the field.
Now, as lead designer of Sonar, Cristiano is contributing his combined 20 years of experience in UX/UI design to bring the platform to life. He is one of the best in his field and even the team eagerly awaits his newest updates as the process of development progresses.
