Complexly Simple

More often than not, the simplest experiences are the most difficult to design and spec— and that difficulty increases 10x when hardware is involved. For Dash, we needed to redesign the setup experience to take advantage of some new hardware capabilities.

Trying to envision the new UX flow was a challenge. Our technical constraints and requirements were heavy and granular, tightly intertwined between the mobile OS, mobile hardware, backend services, device hardware, and the physical environment itself. Keeping track of these while designing the flow is next to impossible. To work around this, I decided to take a hybrid approach. I combined flow diagrams + wireframes + technical logic, enabling me to design the flow with a bird's-eye view in realtime!

While painstaking and dreadful to make as a design deliverable, the results were terrific. Not only did it help me produce a better, simpler design, it became a lifesaver for communicating to our software, firmware, and hardware engineers. In turn, that meant less time in meetings and in our email, and more time together at the pub. =D

Checkout the attachment for a sample of the final deliverable.