Interactive
An app integrated with a physical speaker or a speaker integrated with an app: the two are really part of the same product, Bose’s first foray into products that kids build themselves to varying degrees.
The primary purpose here was educational, but educational in the way Legos are educational — rewarding rather than tedious. If the young user completes the project, they have a regular high-quality Bose speaker, complete with app-controlled light show built into the casing.
A central imagined narrative was built around this: it could be the crucial memorable toy in a preteen sleepover. It could be a confidence-enhancing prop for inviting your first crush over.
After an extensive dive into the UX — all of the potential hurdles for connecting Bluetooth were a map unto themselves — numerous vector illustrations (implemented purely in code so flipping the device would smoothly resize them!) were developed for the instruction-heavy bulk of this app, always coinciding with discussions with engineers about the product.
All kinds of elements jump back and forth between the digital and physical realm to give the product one cohesive experience.
The primary purpose here was educational, but educational in the way Legos are educational — rewarding rather than tedious. If the young user completes the project, they have a regular high-quality Bose speaker, complete with app-controlled light show built into the casing.
A central imagined narrative was built around this: it could be the crucial memorable toy in a preteen sleepover. It could be a confidence-enhancing prop for inviting your first crush over.
After an extensive dive into the UX — all of the potential hurdles for connecting Bluetooth were a map unto themselves — numerous vector illustrations (implemented purely in code so flipping the device would smoothly resize them!) were developed for the instruction-heavy bulk of this app, always coinciding with discussions with engineers about the product.
All kinds of elements jump back and forth between the digital and physical realm to give the product one cohesive experience.
Sesame Street Go
Sesame Street
UI/UX & Visual Design
You can see from the App Store screenshots that it was sort of successful for a time: that’s probably 99% Elmo et al and 1% this UI not getting in the way.
The “science” of UX often means a bunch of cobbled-together spurious correlations from unrepeatable studies and pop-sci just-so stories — it feels like hard science because it exists in a sea of marketing where nobody is qualified to question it. Sesame Street has a whole library of research on early childhood development going back to the 60s so it’s unique to have data that’s survived so many fads and trendy ideas in early childhood development, something that possibly adds to its veracity.
A core aspect of the research that informed the UX decisions of this app: their findings on the development of object permanence. This app needed to be used by kids as young as 2 and 3. In practical terms, that translated to everything in the hamburger menu being for the adults and everything on screen needed to make something fun happen when a pudgy finger poked at it.
Sesame Street
UI/UX & Visual Design
You can see from the App Store screenshots that it was sort of successful for a time: that’s probably 99% Elmo et al and 1% this UI not getting in the way.
The “science” of UX often means a bunch of cobbled-together spurious correlations from unrepeatable studies and pop-sci just-so stories — it feels like hard science because it exists in a sea of marketing where nobody is qualified to question it. Sesame Street has a whole library of research on early childhood development going back to the 60s so it’s unique to have data that’s survived so many fads and trendy ideas in early childhood development, something that possibly adds to its veracity.
A core aspect of the research that informed the UX decisions of this app: their findings on the development of object permanence. This app needed to be used by kids as young as 2 and 3. In practical terms, that translated to everything in the hamburger menu being for the adults and everything on screen needed to make something fun happen when a pudgy finger poked at it.
Like healthcare, the banking industry is rarely at the forefront of technology and design — the user experience of interacting with your bank, or even interacting with the app they released last year, tends to feel pretty outdated.
Simple seeks to change that. They are asking their customers to think of your bank as an app, one that helps you manage your whole financial life through their tools that combine banking and budgeting into one beautiful app.
Continuing Simple’s tactic of always pushing the envelope of social media engagement, this microsite assigned a “spirit animal” to each type of individual who might use simple.com, through a series of questions determining what kind of animal best reflected their spending and savings patterns. The goal, beyond the Buzzfeed-style quiz, was to help people encapsulate their financial patterns in a quick shorthand so they could approach their banking as themselves, not who they thought they were supposed to be.
Simple seeks to change that. They are asking their customers to think of your bank as an app, one that helps you manage your whole financial life through their tools that combine banking and budgeting into one beautiful app.
Continuing Simple’s tactic of always pushing the envelope of social media engagement, this microsite assigned a “spirit animal” to each type of individual who might use simple.com, through a series of questions determining what kind of animal best reflected their spending and savings patterns. The goal, beyond the Buzzfeed-style quiz, was to help people encapsulate their financial patterns in a quick shorthand so they could approach their banking as themselves, not who they thought they were supposed to be.
The biggest takeaway for Josh in this project: he learned how to talk with friends’ and relatives’ young children about their favorite characters since his knowledge of children’s TV ended at about 1994.
The most important thing for you, maybe an HR person or a creative director: Josh Oakley has a lot of experience working on projects for very young users, and his skillset on projects like this Nick Jr. app range from illustrations of backgrounds to icon design, from UI & visual design to interaction design.
The most important thing for you, maybe an HR person or a creative director: Josh Oakley has a lot of experience working on projects for very young users, and his skillset on projects like this Nick Jr. app range from illustrations of backgrounds to icon design, from UI & visual design to interaction design.
Xbox 360 Avatar Environment
Microsoft Xbox
Illustration
Microsoft Xbox
Illustration
“Interactive” tends to translate in people’s ear to “websites and apps.” This illustration for Xbox 360 was a different beast, though, an environment for avatars to hang out. It wrapped around the perimeter in 360°, so an Xbox avatar standing in the cylindrical “room” would see it as the walls. Split into 3 tiers, each one moved in parallax, the lowest level closest to the user, the upper/back level moving the slowest.