Buds of Brooklyn is flower company based in Brooklyn, New York.
I was lucky enough to have complete freedom in the direction of the branding. Flower photographs by Hannah Miles.
The site works seamlessly across tablets, mobile phones and
laptops, resizing content in real time faster than you can flip an iPad.
Playing Fashion asked us to design and build a fashion blog with an editorial feel.
The site launched in 2013 and has been updated on an almost daily basis with beautiful
features comissioned by editor and fashionista Robert Mishchenko.
Unlike the presentation, interaction with data deals with all of the dialogs, customizations and preferences and their influence on the interface. While we usually see the month or week views of our calendars, the real magic always happens in the dialogs. Being able to quickly find the right time slot, creating an event, setting all of its parameters (such as attendees or location) and, finally, getting reminders that are perfect for you — all of these are what make a calendar useful.
If you’re pressed for space and clarity, using black for general interaction works well because it integrates in the system bars and lets you focus on the content, especially when the colors are defined by the user. Also, focusing on the user’s physical abilities and mindset is paramount for a good experience.
One thing we underestimated, despite intense research and good progress on the presentation side, was the hardcore user’s need to customize their calendar experience down to the tiniest detail (for example, changing the font’s transparency). Only after this initial UI exploration did we realize how much work would be needed — not only to implement the design suggestions, but also to customize everything.
Knowing they needed a redesign but having few resources themselves, the team approached Opoloo to get design and interaction on the samelevel as the development. For the task, we delineated goals to attract new users and keep the existing user base satisfied.
Although an iconic and heavily used feature of Business Calendar, the favorite bar was barely accessible: It became too small and too crowded to use as the number of calendars grew. Our solution was to use Android’s black system bar as an optical trick: The favorite bar now feels much taller and easier to tap, due to the black-in-black design. Additionally, we improved touch targets, made visible and invisible states clearer, and implemented a scrolling pattern to house more calendars.
If you’re pressed for space and clarity, using black for general interaction works well because it integrates in the system bars and lets you focus on the content, especially when the colors are defined by the user. Also, focusing on the user’s physical abilities and mindset is paramount for a good experience.
One thing we underestimated, despite intense research and good progress on the presentation side, was the hardcore user’s need to customize their calendar experience down to the tiniest detail (for example, changing the font’s transparency). Only after this initial UI exploration did we realize how much work would be needed — not only to implement the design suggestions, but also to customize everything.
