Problems I was handed,
and what solved them

Problem

An app that people only understand once someone walks them through it, and a screen recording that turns small text into a blur on a phone.

Decision

Rebuild the product's own screens, colours, fonts and words, and render the reel frame by frame with example data, so it stays sharp and reads with the sound off.

Result

An app explained in about a minute, in portrait for feeds and landscape for meeting rooms.

Problem

Every month the HCBP team spent half a day in a room rebuilding position boxes in PowerPoint from Excel, while general managers waited for each what-if.

Decision

A single page that reads the team's own Excel files and writes the plan back. Nothing to install, and all personnel data stays on the laptop.

Result

Half a day became 45 minutes, and a second refinery adopted it.

Problem

Officials sign on stage in front of the room. One tablet over a PDF means misclicks, lost strokes, and the occasional signature wiped while everyone watches.

Decision

A purpose-built app. One tablet, one laptop, one signer at a time, and every screen in the venue following the pen. Nothing to install.

Result

Live, and used at real ceremonies.

Problem

Screening scholarship applicants at scale without exhausting the interview panel.

Decision

Automate the screening interview, not the human one. Real-time voice in the browser on the OpenAI Realtime API plus recorded video answers. The panel kept Zoom.

Result

In production, and demoed live to Pertamina's CEO and President Commissioner.

Problem

Staff sent broadcasts from their own mailboxes, capped at 500 a day, with no record of what arrived. They were already fluent at broadcasting, on WhatsApp.

Decision

The first field is a box for the WhatsApp message, pasted as written. The system formats it, applies the house standard, sends from the organisation's domain, and keeps a record per recipient.

Result

Onboarding takes about two minutes. The 500 ceiling is gone.

Problem

A scholarship programme run across dozens of spreadsheets, with every stage of the application handled by hand.

Decision

One platform with role-based access and a multi-stage application workflow, local-first with Dexie.js so a slow connection never blocks the work.

Result

The registration-to-monitoring backbone of the foundation's programs.

Problem

Nobody could see what their daily commute cost in CO2, fuel, or rupiah, so there was nothing to change.

Decision

Log each commute by mode and distance, compute emissions and savings against driving alone, and turn the numbers into trees, weekly charts, and a story card people share.

Result

A demo with sample data and an executive dashboard on top.

Problem

Tree inventories in the field, with weak signal and photos that lose their location by the time they reach the office.

Decision

Wait for a good GPS fix, capture the tree, tag it by QR or ID with species and condition, and keep everything on the device until one tap exports a ZIP.

Result

GPS-tagged records that survive a day without signal.

Problem

Safety checks at site gates depend on whoever is on duty eyeballing hard hats and vests.

Decision

Run the detection model in the browser with TensorFlow.js instead of streaming footage to a GPU server. No provisioning, no recurring cost, no footage leaving the device.

Result

A working proof of concept as one URL, running on a 2020 iPad.

Problem

Minutes written after the meeting, late and incomplete.

Decision

Transcribe the recording with Whisper and summarise with GPT into structured notes with action items.

Result

Minutes from the recording, not from memory.

Problem

Money tracking that stops working the moment the signal drops or the app store says no.

Decision

Offline first. Data lives on the phone, syncs in the background, and the app installs from the browser without an app store.

Result

Live, with budget forecasting on top of the ledger.

Problem

TOEFL prep that feels like a wall: long tests, English-only explanations, and no reason to come back tomorrow.

Decision

Five questions a day explained in Indonesian, a 42-lesson path across grammar, listening, and reading, and points from practice that buy a full simulated test.

Result

A fictional product built as a portfolio piece.

Problem

Donors give and never learn where the money went.

Decision

Show the split for every rupiah, let the donor set their own split between programs, and publish a live feed and monthly reports.

Result

A fictional template built as a portfolio piece.

Problem

Parents pay for a course and hear nothing until the report card.

Decision

QR check-in in 30 seconds, grades and teacher notes pushed to a parent portal, bills paid from a phone, and certificates that can be verified.

Result

A fictional template built as a portfolio piece.

Problem

A scholarship process with five kinds of user, from applicant to disbursement, and no shared system between them.

Decision

One platform with five roles and a workflow from application to fund disbursement, planned across twenty sprints.

Result

Every stakeholder working in one place.

Problem

Monthly HC reporting rebuilt by hand at each refinery, with no comparable view for executives.

Decision

Power BI, the tool management already opened, with KPIs refined together with the HC team rather than invented for them.

Result

Replicated at RU IV Cilacap, then adopted across every refinery unit.

Problem

Residents of a housing complex needed exit permits during Covid, and the security post needed a way to check them.

Decision

A WhatsApp chatbot, because every resident already had WhatsApp. Supervisor approval in the chat, a QR code at the gate.

Result

Over 3,000 residents served, about 700 conversations a day.