Tiles
our goal was to reimagine the smartphone as an ambient device. by surfacing key information, we explore whether users can get what they need without taps, swipes, or distractions and spend less time interacting with their phone.we had four weeks, and worked in pairs. my partner was ingrid holsten (
the idea came from the research of mark weiser and john steele on ambient devices, or what they called calm computing. we wanted to make a display that was readable at a glance and did not demand attention. we also built on the research of gloria marks, especially her insights into how much cognitive load it takes to check our phones so many times a day.
we ended up with a display, that connects existing apps from your iphone, pulls out only the most important information from said apps, and presents it in a less intrusive way.
we explored a loooooot of different directions... for almost three weeks we were prototyping these interfaces that consisted of gradient colors moving slowly, pretty cliché, but it is the first thing i think about when i hear the word “calm”. the breakthrough came when ingrid pushed us to go back to basics. an interface inspired from old gameboys. and it worked so much better. i think thats a good learning. kill your darlings, back to basics etc etc...
evolution of our prototype...
typical figma board (what a mess.)