I joined Twitter in 2013 to help bolster their prototyping efforts. Earlier that year I had published videos online on how to use Quartz Composer to bring static designs to life without using any code. It spearheaded the trend and process that is now so common among designers workflows. It was also a great environment for me to learn from some of the smartest people in the industry and hone my approach to working on products that touch so many people. Some of the other things I worked on while there was: Tweetdeck, Android Tablet, iOS app redesign concepts, Direct messaging, Pull to refresh & migrating the team to Sketch and building Sketch plugins.
Share Tweet via Dm
This was the last project I saw through at Twitter. The goal was to come up with a new way to share tweets with other users and to make it feel lightweight and effortless. I worked with one other designer and both iOS and Android engineering teams. After we reviewed these close to final renders, I followed up with a prototype built in Obj-C so that we could get the animations just right for production.
home feed to overlay
Previous to this example, I had toyed with having the most recent contacts appear in a more organic style, almost like you dropped coins on the floor. However analogous it felt to the real world, this seemed to confuse users so we opted to go with a more conventional grid and list view. This took a lot of the guesswork out of the equation.
scrolled list
Like contacts app on iOS, I played with the idea of the cell sticking to the bottom of the navigation bar. Another subtle touch that made the experience feel more considered is the change in background opacity, from semi-opaque to full upon scroll.
list view to message detail
A recurring theme in my designs is the feeling of continuity. This was the guiding theme for this transition from a list cell to the users inbox. Rather than a gratuitous attempt at taking what was in the cell already ( ie the avatar ) and making it move to the top, I wanted to experiment with the idea of using opposing directions to connect the two elements. In a sense, it’s a bit like directing an actor on stage. You use what you have at your disposal in unique ways that keep the audience guessing.
Pull to refresh
Pull to refresh was a project that spanned my entire time at Twitter. For various reasons we would tackle it, only to be pulled onto different projects. The examples below, were a more recent exploration on how we could keep a classic PTR right up until the moment you let go, and at that point it takes an unusual yet delightful turn. The big challenge with all these concepts was to find something that could work across all page types