Orchestra

Get the work you want to do when you want to do it.

Orchestra helps coordinate your work on projects with other experts, automating away parts of the project that would typically be repetitive and annoying. Work on things you’re amazing at anytime you'd like, without the frustration of organizing teams.

  • Pick up interesting work whenever you want
  • Receive mentorship and thorough review from your peers
  • If you want to be an expert in design, you can focus on that. If you want to help with client interaction, you can focus on that, too!

Key Concepts

Projects

  • Projects in Orchestra are represented as a series of interconnected tasks.

    Web design = Client communication + Visual design + SEO + ...

  • Tasks are carried out by an expert or by a machine (to make experts’ lives easier!).

    Experts bring in the human element, like making design, branding, and layout decisions

    Machines get rid of the frustrating work, like collecting a client’s images from all over the web in one place

Reviewing

  • Core experts do the initial work on a task.

    Oscar's visual design for the new website is absolutely stunning!

  • Reviewers provide feedback to other experts to make their work even better.

    Meredith gave Oscar a few pointers that really helped make his headlines stand out.

  • The core expert submits the task when their work is complete.

  • The reviewer can choose to accept the task, which is either selected for further review or marked as complete.

  • They could also choose to return the task, requesting changes from and giving feedback to the worker they are reviewing.

Certifications

  • Certifications allow experts to work on tasks they're great at.

    Michelle is amazing at communicating, she can pick up client interview tasks at any time.

  • Experts can work toward all sorts of certifications, picking up practice tasks to build experience.

    Joseph is a solid visual designer but needs a little more practice writing copy—let's give him some!

  • Experts need additional certification to work in a reviewer role.

    Amy has been designing for quite some time and would be great at providing feedback.

Using Orchestra

Sign up to use Orchestra by visiting expert.unlimitedlabs.com and creating a username and password. Be sure to provide a valid email—we’ll keep you up-to-date with the status of tasks you've been working on and reach out with important messages when need be.

Once you log in, you’ll be presented with the Orchestra dashboard, your home base for managing the various tasks you’ll be working on. The dashboard is divided into four different sections:

  • In progress: tasks that you're currently working on
  • Pending review: tasks that are waiting for reviewer feedback
  • Returned from reviewer: tasks that have been returned for further work; these are the most important to get to quickly!
  • Pending update: tasks that are waiting on secondary reviewers but that will no longer need your input

The new task buttons allow you to select tasks of different types: either perform the initial work for a new delivery task, or provide feedback for another expert.

We’ll take another look at the dashboard in detail shortly. For now, let’s look at our first task!

Once you hit the new task button, you’ll be assigned a new task and presented with the Orchestra task view. This is highly customizable depending on the type of work involved, but typically involves something like the following:

  • Task instructions: background information and advice to get you started successfully
  • Reminders: checklists of vital and easy-to-forget components of your work
  • Client questions: information you'd like to pass on to the client
  • Extracted media: images automatically captured from previous client site to make your life easier
  • Team messages: document containing review feedback and the ongoing dialog surrounding the work

After you’ve finished your task, you can submit your work at the bottom of the screen.

Let’s take a quick look at the life of a sample task to better understand how the pieces of Orchestra fit together.

  • When you pick up a new core task, it appears in your in-progress area.
  • Once you submit a task, it might be selected for review and move into the Pending review area.
  • From there, the reviewer can return the task to you for further work. If you have a returned task present on your dashboard, you won't be able to work on anything else until you've sent in your updates.
  • The reviewer can also accept the task. If it’s then selected for further review, it will live in the Pending update area until it is completed, but you’ll no longer have to worry about it on your end. If it's not, you've completed your task, and it will move into the appropriate area.

The review process itself should seem familiar—currently, feedback from reviewers in Orchestra consists of general comments and annotated images, just like a traditional process!

Review tasks move a little differently through the Orchestra dashboard.

  • When you pick up a new review task, it appears in your In progress area.
  • If you accept the task as-is, it might be selected for further review and move into the Pending review area and you’ll now be interacting with another reviewer taking a look at your work. If it's not selected for further review, your task is complete!
  • If you return the task to the core worker, it will live in your Pending update section until they send you the updates you’ve requested.

Now that you’re familiar with Orchestra, we can’t wait for you to get started! Pick up a new task today or reach out to hello@unlimitedlabs.com with any questions or concerns!

Our motivation

We intend to open source Orchestra, and are building it as part of our mission to empower creative and analytical experts in practicing their craft.

We are a seven-person team in NYC. We’re passionate about improving the future of how people do creative and analytical work. We have a strong team of designers and engineers from UC Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, and RPI who have worked extensively on systems that help people work productively online.

Beyond focusing on profit, we believe that the products and experiences we design should be considerate of their greater social context and impact. To stay true to these values, we are in the process of becoming a B-certified corporation.