Firefox OS, Mozilla's mobile operating system, went through a number of iterations over the course of its lifespan - from smart phones to feature phones, tablets, and even televisions.
After some initial successes, the program was pulled in many different directions. Alopex was our attempt to re-align Firefox OS with Mozilla's mission and vision.
Alopex put web content at the the centre of the experience and worked to eradicate traditional mobile browsing pain points. By challenging the dominant app ecosystem, it also served as a focal point for open source community participation.
My Role
As a UX manager and joint concepting lead, I shaped the product vision, led multiple interaction concepting teams, and worked with product and visual leads to communicate the product story.
Mobile browsers' failure to evolve has created a UX gap compared to native apps. Most mobile browsers are miniaturized versions of their desktop counterparts. Controls are not designed for touch, content is difficult to read, and bookmark management is tedious.
Kite aimed to modernize the tablet browsing experience by optimizing the UI for touch, allowing offline browsing, and facilitating content re-use and discovery.
My Role
As a UX manager, I jointly led a small team to establish the product vision and goals, develop a proof of concept, and pitch the concept to Mozilla's innovation board.
With 120 million registered users, Nokia Store delivered over 15 million apps each day.
My Role
As a UX lead, I partnered with product owners, user research, external agencies, development, and test teams to deliver designs for three flagship smartphones and multiple concept phones.
I also worked closely with global design teams to align design language, patterns and end-to-end flows across the platform.
This camera re-design for Firefox OS was a key element in Mozilla’s partnership with KDDI and LG Electronics. The design challenge was to create a UI that would work equally well across a wide variety of device types, from bare bones hardware with small screens to powerful larger screen devices.
My Role
As UX lead and partner design liaison, I delivered the initial design concept and wireframes, facilitated design workshops with LG in Mozilla's Taipei office and worked closely with visual design, engineering and product teams to see the design through implementation.
While mobile phones have revolutionized our lives, constant notifications from social networks, email, texting and apps are increasing anxiety levels and distracting us from the world and people that surround us.
The Essential Phone concept aimed to minimize these distractions by reducing notifications and adopting a simple, efficient user interface based on the user's most frequent tasks.
My Role
As the lead interaction designer on the project, I worked with the concepting team to define the system's navigation model. I then aligned the efforts of multiple design teams across North America and Asia as they worked on various aspects of the overall framework.
Magic Leap’s pioneering mixed-reality web browser is one of the first to allow users to place interactive digital content within users’ real-world physical environment. For example, an architect can place an interactive virtual 3D model of a large building on a boardroom table to present to a client. Or a sports fan can fill their entire home with video, stats and social feeds while in a zoom call with friends.
The ability to move, rotate and arrange digital objects was critical to the success of the mixed reality browser. However, as part of our testing, we discovered that less than a third of participants were able to successfully place virtual objects in their physical space after completing the device’s introductory tutorial. Participants were overwhelmed by the amount of tutorial content, had no way of practicing the concepts, and did not retain the information. Instead, they tried random hand gestures and controller button combinations and learned through extended trial and error.
As the browser design and research lead, I alerted the device tutorial team to the issues and made recommendations for improvements. However, the tutorial team was unable to commit to changes before launch. To support the browser’s key use case, I proposed creating a web-based tutorial that would show upon initial browser launch. The tutorial was served over the web to allow us to continue to build and iterate beyond the product’s ship date.
The tutorial introduced the unique benefits of the mixed reality web, focused on a few simple concepts, and allowed users to learn this concepts by performing them in the browser. Upon completion of the tutorial, users successfully setup digital objects in their person space, demonstrating the unique potential of the mixed-reality browser.
In a follow-up study, over 90% of participants were able to successfully learn and retain manipulation tasks and 100% of participants preferred the browser tutorial to the initial device tutorial. The browser emerged as the most used app on the platform, accounting for over 40% of device usage. Out of box tutorial recommendations were also incorporated into subsequent device updates.
