Creating a Mobile Experience for a Brand Already on the Go.
If there’s anything that we at Atomicdust love more than technology and music, it’s exercising (not true).
Actually, it’s challenges that we love. And recently, we ran up against one heck of a design challenge.
Regular readers of our blog may recall a recent collaboration with our friends from Halski Design for the St. Louis based consumer electronics company, Yurbuds. Yurbuds.com received many accolades, and when we were asked to take that experience and translate it to the touch screen of the iPad (largely for Apple Store employees to demo for their customers) and mobile devices, we were happy to oblige.
There are a few schools of thought when it comes to designing for different devices. Some say mobile sites should feature the same content in a more screen-and-finger-friendly presentation than the desktop version. Others say the content needs to be pared down for unique devices.
While there are plenty of cases that call for a unified content approach, we felt that the smaller versions of Yurbuds' dynamic, parallax desktop site were crying for something optimized and edited yet equally special on smaller screens.
Anyone who’s ever pinched and swiped a screen knows that the user experience of the iPad is vastly different than browsing on a desktop, so we knew that just tweaking the “standard” site wouldn’t do. Instead, we designed it to have an app-like experience. Visitors to the site can swipe vertically through sections, and browse pages in those sections by swiping horizontally.
Smaller screens present different design challenges, so we wanted to create something that would look at home on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. That meant we weren't going to mimic the interactions of any one particular platform, and we couldn't rely on a fixed set of browser capabilities. We landed on a simple, quick-to-navigate site highlighting the most important content for viewers on-the-go: Yurbuds' products, features, and contact information.
The result? Three consistent brand experiences, specially tailored for a viewer's particular device.
Check out the fruits of our labor on your device of choice by visiting yurbuds.com.
Jason Stoff is a fancy-pants designer, photographer, and handsome rogue in St. Louis, MO. And also holds the title 'Senior Designer' at Atomicdust.
Mike Roberts is a Project Manager at Atomicdust, a loyal, longtime resident of downtown St. Louis, and an award-winning Art Director. When not at work, you can find Mike piloting his MINI Cooper S around some of the midwest's finest motorsports parks.
