microsoft surface duo & neo
On October 2nd, 2019. Microsoft announced the Microsoft Surface Duo and Neo
The new members of the Surface Family were released on the 2020 holidays. I was assigned in 2017 to work on the early version of this device, which was focused on the creative market. Together as a team was looking for ways to make the navigation intuitive and efficient for the user.
We worked on mood boards that could represent the look and feel of the overall experience based on its functionality and the marketing objectives
Make it smooth!
Working with the amazing designer Ryan Vulk, we were looking to make the OOBE experience as cool and creative as possible. On one side we had the limitation on the OS, that at the time, did not allow us to make major improvements to the animation and interactions. But we had an idea!
We created our own tool
I worked beside Sohum Chatterjee, an incredible Dev at Microsoft who would rework the Lottie tool created by Airbnb and make it export files from BodyMovin into XAML files, the codebase needed to be able to implement more animations into the system!
And with that we were now able to implement animations into my first task:
The OOBE Experience and all its versions through the process.
Hunting scenarios
An important part of our duties was finding new scenarios to fulfill, stepping into the user’s shoes, and considering all possible circumstances where motion could improve the experience and accessibility to the content.
Challenge…
A very difficult challenge in my experience was convincing engineers about the importance of motion for the user experience, even on the dimming aspect of the device. Motion can make the experience of changing the light exposure into a more pleasant and natural experience. Several tests were done to approach this matter.
And with this, many scenarios and research came later that had to be implemented into the device, so working with the developers to ensure the technical aspects were effectively applied was part of our job.
