OVERVIEW
Motorola Atrix's product concept started with the company's decision to add nVidia's dual-core processor, Tegra 2, to the portfolio line-up. I was tasked to identify and add signature features to highlight the processing power for the new chipset while aligning Motorola Android platform design to the qHD (540x960) resolution. The design challenges included hardware dependent new user interface and media work for qHD pentile display, fingerprint reader, dual display support via HDMI and also updates to existing design based on the performance improvement for live wallpaper, home screen panel switcher, and camera control.
The development process involved not only detail communications with the senior leadership team on product proposition and design direction, but also a heavy collaboration with the software team to convert the highly conceptual ideas to practical implementation. The result is stunning - Motorola Atrix won Best of CES at its launch in CES 2011.
CREDITS
Creative direction: Chen-Je Huang
User interface and media design: Gillian F., Carol L., Penny S., Scott N., Chen-Je Huang
Animation: Patrick C. and David J.
Production management: Chad R. and Chen-Je Huang
VALUE PROPOSITION
The most powerful smart phone in the world featuring nVidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor – Best of CES 2011
The lapdock comes with a larger screen, keyboard, and trackpad to provide an enhanced interactive experience for the user, elevating the phone to a formidable computing solution.
SAMPLE SCREENSHOTS
EVOLUTION OF DESIGN
This design is aimed to provide the user a quick and easy way to switch from one home screen panel to another.
A conceptual rendering for the home screen panel switcher to extend to the user's profile switcher.
A conceptual rendering of the home screen panel switcher.
A conceptual rendering of a home screen panel layout.
A mock up of the home screen panel layout.
A draft of home screen panel layout.
A draft of the home screen panel layout.
Camera control
Camera application was re-implemented in OpelGL on Atrix due to the chipset upgrade. It provided the opportunity to improve the usability of Motorola camera UI.
A conceptual simulation of the touch control in camera.
An excerpt of Atrix camera design flow.
A conceptual simulation of a circular menu for camera UI. A similar design is used by Google in Honeycomb.
qHD home screen layout
In Android's standard wvga home screen layout, the system distributes the padding equally between the 4x4 grid. However, in the qHD (960x540) resolution, it causes the issue that shortcut icons becomes relatively small and the padding gets too big. I proposed several design to fix the problem: (1) Center the 4x4 grid; (2) Adding one role of additional function such as fixed shortcuts or news feed; (3) making a 4x5 grid. (1) was selected as the solution to maxmin the compatibility.
Some mock-ups for the qHD (960x540) home screen design exploration.
FINGERPRINT READER
The fingerprint reader hardware was added to the product configuration to provide additional security measure for the enterprise user. Some set up flows were complex to ensure the registration is error free. I applied animated help and hints to simplify the UI flow.
A simulation of the fingerprint reader registration design.
An excerpt of the fingerprint reader UI flow.
