"It seems there's finally a mandate to make change exceedingly functional and pleasing to use, and we have to say, the Sidekick 4G's interface is pretty dang cool, every part of the UI has seen a stylish overhaul, and it's both seriously eye-catching and useful."
- Engaget Review
As the Creative Director and principal designer, I lead a team of 15 people to redesign the Sidekick. We started from scratch to create new bold, iconic and highly differentiated design. The software and hardware was designed to work together, providing a very integrated and fluid experience.
The ID is an homage to the original Sidekick swivel action, but features an updated 45 degree angled slide out screen. We textured the grain in the aluminum keyboard frame to match the angle of the iconic screen as well as the grip lines on the rear of the device.
This feature has a dedicated hardware button to activate it. Echoing the iconic angle of the slide out screen, this feature allows users to quickly jump to recent, or favorite apps and tasks. This screen is an excelent example of how we leveraged typography as a functional design elemtent.
We designed the lock screen to by functional and stylistic, featuring an angular clock that presents itself in the typographic language of the updated Sidekick. The lock screen is customizable it so that swiping upward will open a user-defined app, while swiping downward will take you to the last app or screen you were on.
The Sidekick is a messaging machine. Our messaging experience was optimized for style and efficiency. Research showed that a primary messaging action for our users was to take attachments from contacts and re-share them with others, making them their own. We build a feature specifically around this called "super attach" this took all pictures, or attachments sent to you from friends and put them just tap away.
Founded on the core principals of Youthful, Social, Bold, Edgy and confident, We developed a robust set of design guidelines. This allowed us to align visual, interaction and industrial design very tightly and assure that our design intent was being adheared to with marketing and OEM partners.
We developed an engine allowing us to create custom themes that effected every aspect of the UI. Users could select cobinations of wallpapers and matching complimentry colors scheams.