Palm WebOS
Pioneering mobile touch interface.
I was a member of the original WebOS design team and helped take the platform from napkin sketches and ideas to version 1.0.
After seven years as a design research and interaction design consultant at IDEO, I had worked on many fascinating strategic design projects. Few of them ever reached the market in a way that resembled our original recommendations.
A new curiosity emerged: I wanted to understand the long tail of design decisions necessary to bring a product to market—all the intricate details, trade-offs, and compromises. I joined the Palm WebOS team to gain experience shipping a large, complex software product. With sleeves rolled up, I sat shoulder to shoulder with engineers building the software I had designed. I began developing my approach to integrating design into an engineering organization – and I took these lessons to several startups where I worked closely with founders and small teams.
As Senior Interaction Designer at Palm I led conceptual exploration, user testing and detailed interaction design for several core applications.
I was responsible for the user experience of calendar, memos, tasks, music, camera, videos and photos applications.
The calendar has been an important part of the Palm experience since the original Palm Pilot and it was a major focus for me. We defined several high level user experience goals:
Take full advantage of the possibilities of a multi-touch user interface.
Allow the user to manage multiple calendars from multiple sources.
Help the user make the most effective use of their time possible.
Be as easy to use as paper.
“The Calendar app is where the Palm Pre really shines.”
Early conceptual explorations.
Example wireframe of event details view.
Detailed design of system wide date picker.
Design for calendar reminders.
Final month view design.
Final day view design.
Final event details view design.