Being users themselves in their daily life, Use Design members like to imagine new concepts for products and services. For this advanced design project Use Design looked at a mobile multimedia player often encountered in public transport.

Nowadays these players allow to listen to music, watch videos, play games, access the internet… and will provide even more functionality in the future. The whole of these complex functions needs to be accommodated in an interface.

User observations brought to light that many users like to hold this kind of devices horizontally. For different reasons, physiological (better grip, an impression of security and control) and visual (video viewing, screen visibility and so on).

With this notion in mind Use Design decided to imagine a navigation structure optimized for a product held horizontally by two hands at the same time. The idea was to make the navigation to various functions very efficient and allow the user to quickly change player modes.

To realize this concept the agency members:

conducted a benchmark;

studied the different ways of holding the object;

sketched rapidly several interface concepts;

proposed different visual design directions and several usability ideas before elaborating one of them.

This project “from scratch” was realized in a limited amount of time and cannot serve as a client reference. For the agency it was an opportunity to identify new user needs and to propose an innovation in the interaction design domain.