In Android 9 Pie, Google started the transition from static navigation buttons to gestures with a near-universally panned half-step. The traditional 3-button navigation bar was replaced with a slimmer gesture “pill” and back button. The app switcher got a similar facelift, spreading apps out horizontally and adding a dock filled…

This project was part of a 10-week Design Thinking Studio class at UW’s Global Innovation Exchange (GIX). We were grouped into teams of 3 and given the task of identifying a target problem in the broader space of single-use-plastics and, through research, generating requirements, prototyping, and user testing, arriving at…

Last time in Project Rebirth…

Last Time in Project Rebirth…

My first smartphone was an LG G4, and I loved that thing. I chose the G4 over the then-recently launched Galaxy S6 because it was slightly cheaper, the camera was quite good, and (most importantly) I’m a contrarian mess. While the S6 would surely make it easier for me to…

The nice folks over at Wondershare reached out and asked me to try out their UI mockup software, Mockitt, and write about my experience. I was already planning a series redesigning popular apps, so it made sense to combine the two projects and learn Mockitt by using it for something…

Bezels are dying! Xiaomi’s original 2016 Mi Mix marked the beginning of a borderless trend, stretching the screen right up to the edge of the phone (though the 2014 Sharp Aquos Crystal did it first). The idea of trimming the glass crust from your phone’s screen is quite compelling, but…

Before I dive deeper into what this means, I have a couple of things to say. First, a disclaimer. I only speak for myself, not anyone else in the queer community. I am not confused or misled, I am relaying my own experiences. I didn’t know many of the words…

Mobile operating systems are increasingly moving to gesture-based navigation systems. Palm introduced the concept of a swipe-based gesture nav system in 2008. The company’s WebOS utilized a touch sensitive area below the screen to detect swipe and half-swipe gestures to perform actions like showing the dock, switching between apps, and…