Role: UX, Design, Prototyping
2019 @ Metalab with Brandon Arnold, Megan O’Rourke, Samuel Medvedowsky, and Dan Lord with Pitch
Pitch is a cloud-based presentation tool that aims to make everyone a power user. Without the stress of formatting fonts, colors, or layouts from scratch, people are free to focus on creating beautiful, on-brand work.
Rather than have us tackle the full product or lead the charge on a defined feature set, Pitch wanted us to operate as an extension of their internal design team so that we could challenge their thinking and provide fresh perspectives.
If we wanted to create converts, we’d have to build an evolution of existing tools rather than a complete departure from what people already knew: familiar in all the right ways and refreshingly different in ways that felt intuitive and invisible. We wanted to represent the modern, energetic potential of what presentation software could be while honoring its practical, pragmatic legacy.
To create an experience that would cater to a diversity of thinkers and prioritize ease of use, we created a set of shortcut commands. People could use these commands to create presentation outlines as quickly as possible without lifting their fingers off the keyboard. This helped build a bridge between content and design while relying more on the software itself to foster flow and not interrupt or limit people’s thought processes.
We zeroed in on the design panel as having the most potential to create a more supportive design environment. Presentation software can tend to feature an overwhelming number of options, often causing confusion for the user. Yet if we designed a UI that leaned too far in the other direction, it might feel sparse and not powerful enough for those wanting to flex their design muscles. Having an inline editor maximizes the canvas size and declutters the interface while putting useful tools at people’s disposal to make their slides simple but engaging.
Design concepts
