Designing a HUE Companion App and Learning Origami
Using a new prototyping software to help with the development of an Apple Watch app.
I’m always looking for new ways to communicate ideas with clients and developers. When Origami, Facebook's prototyping tool, was announced, I started to think of a way to include learning it into my process. The moment came when I was tasked with creating an Apple Watch app to control HUE lights. It was the perfect project to design and learn Origami with. This case study mostly delves into learning the new software and how it applied to my project.
App Design
The design for the app was fairly straight forward there was already an existing iPhone app. It needed to be able to select scenes and turn on individual lights. There was also a component to change the lights color. The design allowed for some very eye-catching animations that I looked forward to adding in my prototype. Once the design was created, broke up all the different elements so they could be manipulated individually in the prototype
Adapting to a new tool
When I decided to embark on this mini adventure into a new prototyping software, Origami was in it's very early stages and there were continuous updates to the program. I found a great online community of people that were all playing around with the tool and we would constantly help each other out.
Delightful Animations
The advantage of using a prototyping software is that you are able to view animations before you invest a lot of development work into it. Being able to show the developers and stakeholders these animations, made the process much easier and enjoyable for everyone.
Organization is key
Origami uses Quartz Composer and a library of interface-specific patches to create extremely fluid and dynamic prototypes. I quickly realized organization was of upmost importance. All the patches could easily get out of hand. You have to make sure they are all placed in their proper groups and labeled correctly.
Conclusion
I faced many challenges discovering the capabilities of Origami, but in the end, I was rewarded with a functioning prototype and a new appreciation for a different way of viewing a problem I had faced many times before. I also became the go-to person at my company for this kind of prototyping software. I was glad to have had the opportunity to design a new app and test out a new piece of software.