José Rafael Striedinger

Projects About me

ARKDE platform

ARKDE is an award-winning e-learning platform offering game development and digital art courses entirely in Spanish, reaching thousands of Latinos around the world. It features over 120 hours of original content, developed in collaboration with a team of engineers and artists, and is proudly supported by an Epic Games Megagrant.

Development: Solo project. 5-6 months for initial release.
Tools: PHP, HTML/CSS, Javascript, Webpack and CI/CD.

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Role & contributions

As Founder, Designer, and Engineer, I:

  • Built a robust eLearning platform using JavaScript, PHP, and HTML/CSS, supporting hundreds of students across Latin America that led to funding from Epic Games.

  • Led UI design in Figma, defining a cohesive brand through color, spacing, and typography.

  • Directed the production of 9 online courses with engineers and technical artists, delivering 120+ hours of content on Unity and Unreal Engine 5

The Design Process

Fixing a personal problem

During my undergrad years in Colombia, there were no formal options to study game development, so I taught myself through pirated books and YouTube. I soon met others facing the same challenge and decided to do something about it. In 2015, I launched the country’s first game development bootcamp and later co-founded an education company that ran workshops and events until March 2020.

To reach a broader audience and embrace digital learning, I pivoted the idea into ARKDE, an eLearning platform offering game development and digital art courses entirely in Spanish. ARKDE comes from well, arcade machines!

The branding and design

I wanted ARKDE to reflect a young, creative spirit, so the branding needed to be colorful and playful. For the UI, I chose a claymorphism style with a focus on purple and yellow, colors that evoke creativity.

Before writing a single line of code, I designed the full interface in Figma, defining key elements like typography, color palette, and card components. The response to the style was overwhelmingly positive, giving me the green light to move forward with development.

Check out the UI design on Figma in this link.

arkde platform by jose striedinger
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The platform development

The platform runs on WordPress with a fully custom theme coded from scratch. It manages users, courses, lessons, student progress, and more. For LMS and social functionality, it integrates LearnDash, and the BuddyBoss plugin.

To streamline development and deployment, I use Webpack and npm to automate tasks like compiling SASS, bundling JS file and minifying assets. The theme is optimized for performance, built entirely with vanilla JavaScript (no jQuery) and enhanced with libraries like GSAP for smooth animations.

Finally, I use Buddyworks platform for easily automated deployments

Check the code at the Github repo here.

The content production

I focused on creating educational content alongside professionals more skilled than myself, actively seeking out talented Latino artists and developers. As of 2025 ARKDE features 120+ hours of courses made with experts from Electronic Arts, Nimble Giant, Teravision Games, and more, covering technical art, VFX, shaders, lighting, C++, and AI across 8+ courses (2022–2024).

As Producer, I led content development, managing schedules, deliverables, and editing all lessons in Premiere Pro, while also handling marketing efforts like trailers and YouTube talks.

Thanks to strong SEO, ARKDE has never spent a cent on social media ads.

More videos and images