HTC Rhyme is the first lifestyle mobile ecosystem produced by HTC. The mobile device comes with a charging dock, headphones, car speaker, and a charm that alerts you when a call, text, or email is coming in.
MY ROLE
UX Design Lead
UI Art Director
Industrial design consultant
CHALLENGES
Create a mobile phone that will appeal to a 25-55, female audience.
IMPACT
Create an ecosystem, not just a phone. We wanted to have a touch point with our consumer, every minute of everyday. From the moment she wakes up (dock by bedside) to work (blue tooth car speaker and headset) to out at night (purse charm).
Consumer Study
Organized and led a grassroots internal user study with the target market to gain quick feedback on hardware and software designs.
CHALLENGE
Sense 3.0 Sense 3.5 for Rhyme challenge: Create a new visual language for HTC Sense on Rhyme that appeals to the target audience and keep the Sense brand DNA in tact.
SOLUTION
Created a new visual language for Rhyme ™ that was such a success that it became the visual design language for the next generation of HTC Sense ™.
SIMPLIFY HTC SENSE™ (HTC OS layer on top of Android)
Led the project to simplify the experience from Sense 3.0 to Sense 3.5 and beyond. Since the inception of Sense there have been many new features created but not all utilized or needed. My initiative was to simplify Sense by collaborating with specific app owners to reduce the amount of complexity and repetition of functionality within all of the Sense apps.
Extensive user testing was done on the simplified Sense experience resulting in the most successful user study for Sense.
Design Principles for HTC Sense on Rhyme
An expert, instantly. UI is straight forward. No hidden functionality.
Beginners guide to Sense. Seamless transition from Zero to standard Sense.
Gives you control. Fine grain control over data usage.
Learn through transitions. Animations help users learn how to navigate the system.
Presented the HTC Rhyme ™ UX philosophy to over 150 press attendees at the Verizon product launch in NYC. Chosen by HTC leadership to sell HTC the Rhyme UX story to Verizon Wireless. Resulting in one million units sold.
The HTC Flyer is a 7in Android tablet device that utilizes both pen and touch.
MY ROLE
Interaction design lead
CHALLENGES
Based on my past design experience with pen and touch I was asked to design the Flyer Pen UI. Shipping a pen with the tablet was a decision that came late into the project. Hence, the user could only ink in three applications.
IMPACT
My responsibility as the lead UI designer was to design the pen UI for the device.
To enable the user to feel the Pen experience was deeper than three applications, I designed the feature HTC Scribble ™. This solution enabled users to take a screenshot of any screen and ink.
Received patent award for my design.
Conducted usability observational studies to uncover how users write with pen and notebook.
Below, are some of the design iterations for the pen menu.
