Big Room Studios | A Creative Web Development, Design and Technology Firm in Portland, ME

Think Big “Every great dream begins with a dreamer.” — Harriet Tubman
Start Small “Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” — Francis of Assisi
Do Good “A good head and a good heart are a formidable combination.” — Nelson Mandela

Hey There

Big Room Studios is a creative technology company. We design and build real time, responsive web applications for tablet, mobile and touch enabled devices. We provide lean startup consulting, brand, design, and agile development services. We are a member of the Casco Bay Tech Hub and a proud supporter of Portland Buy Local! Our mission is to create jobs, invent new tools, and to make the world a better place.

What is Up

We are currently working on: a consumer electronics trade-in and recycling framework for NextWorth; a web platform for art galleries; an interactive storytelling app market called Yarn; and, a massively multiplayer browser-based 3D first-person game called Centerpoint. We are now hosting a weekly hacker meetup - come on down and get nerdy with us! And lastly, you can now get more news, oddities and fun on our NEW BLORG!

What Went Down

We recently built: a real-time group doodle app in meteor.js; a friend feed and user matching engine written in Node.js for a policital social network called Ruck.us; a brand and package design for a line of organic pizza dough; an iPad optimized marketing site; and a mobile friendly document management tool for JM Coull.

Build / Measure / Learn In today’s world, the measure of success is not how fast you can build or how many page views you get, it’s how fast you learn. The lean startup methodology employs rapid iteration, testable hypotheses and rigorous analytics to verify ideas, eliminate waste and find the shortest path to viability. We believe that the power of this process works for startups, established businesses, and non-profits alike.
Agile / Development Agile software development is an incremental process in which requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration and cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, user-centered design, a time-boxed approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It enables us to predict feature delivery dates and to deploy the most important aspects of your application in the least amount of time.
Cloud / Computing “The Cloud” is an oft abused buzz phrase - but amazingly the reality actually exceeds the hype. Cloud computing is transforming the way services are delivered over the internet. It means nearly unlimited flexibility for systems architecture and scalability. So when you think cloud, think infinite possibility. And when you think Big Room, think a bunch of super-nerds who know how to make “The Cloud” work for you.
Creative / Technology Our software engineers are able to bridge the gaps between functionality, creativity and elegant solutions. Our designers work side-by-side with engineers to create user-centered, beautiful and functional products. We work in the space between the possible and potential of technology and we believe that good software should be a natural and powerful extension of the user’s intention.
Responsive / Design Responsive design is an approach to building web applications that aims to provide an optimal user experience across all resolutions. That means fast load times, good performance, simple interaction, easy reading and obvious navigation across the ever increasing array of internet-connected devices. It is no small task, and we must frequently accept compromise, but we believe that wherever there is internet our applications should work.

Creative

Brand Strategy
Web Design
Print Design
Illustration
Video Editing
3D Modeling
Welding

User Experience
Interaction Design
Responsive Design
Game Design
Sandwich Making
Cat Sitting
Zymurgy

Technology

Enterprise Applications
Business Networks
Virtualization
Cloud Hosting
Data Architecture
Big Data
Data Security

PHP Development
Symfony2 Development
Node.js Development
Unity 3D
Content Management Systems
E-Commerce
Robotics

Work

Target Mobile

We recently built a responsive skin for Target Mobile’s in-store electronics trade-in application so that it could be operated by their mobile sales reps from a variety of devices. Responsive layout employs modern CSS to progressively adapt a site to different resolutions and screen sizes. In fact, our site (the one you’re on) is responsive - try resizing your browser window or looking at it on different devices to see what we mean.

This work was part of our ongoing collaboration with NextWorth solutions - a leader in consumer electronics trade-ins and recycling. They partnered with us many moons ago during Series A funding and are now a viable multi-million dollar operation.

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JM Coull

JM Coull is known for their highly technical construction services from planning and feasibility through architecture, engineering, general contracting and commissioning. As one of our long term customers they have taken advantage of the full spectrum of services we provide, from illustration to infrastructure. We recently built an iPad optimized marketing site for them as well as a client document repository made with Symfony2 and Amazon S3 cloud storage.

visit the site

Fairmont Hotels

Fairmont Hotels & Resorts owns and operates some of the world’s most spectacular historic properties including Banff Springs and The Plaza. We’ve collaborated with their business development group on brand within a brand strategy, video production, interactive web applications, email marketing and employee engagement campaigns.

These efforts also included something that proves our unwavering commitment to customer service - pictured here: bucket loads of templates for the ubiquitous and loathsome boardroom staple, Microsoft PowerPoint. Does doing something as drab and soulless as making a good looking PowerPoint deck violate our mission to do good? We freely admit, it’s a shade of grey.

Inclusion for iOS

Our very own Dan Raftery launched his first iOS game: Inclusion, a simple yet addicting numbers game where you're pitted against the clock in an effort to reach the goal before time runs out. The screen begins to fade away while your fingers feverishly press the numbers in hopes of adding up (or subtracting down) to the goal.

Inclusion may not let you destroy countless waves of bloodsucking alien zombie goats, but it will make you tons smarter. Before you know it, you'll be adding and subtracting faster than the cash register at the grocery store. Give your brain some love and mash numbers with Inclusion.