Apple

Apple

CUPERTINO (2014) - After 2.5 years building developer tools for the iOS and Android community, TestFlight was acquired by Apple in February of 2014. The teams from Edmonton and Santa Monica all moved to the iTunes campus in Cupertino, CA, where we would be absorbed into the iTunes product, design, and engineering orgs.



TestFlight iOS

First order of business was to get TestFlight up and running for iOS developers in time to announce new developer capabilities with some confidence by WWDC 2014. Working across iOS teams and iTunes Connect engineering, I led a host of initiatives that would allow developers to push builds directly from Xcode into iTunes Connect where they could specify who would recieve TestFlight beta builds.

The evolution of the Apple app ecosystem would see a myriad of new capabilities for developers to create experiences across iOS, tvOS, and watchOS platforms. TestFlight would provide a centralized experience for controlled beta access to new builds and help developers create connected experiences across devices.



iTunes Connect

iTunes Connect has long been the administrative portal for managing everything from developer admin access and contracts, to App Store, Apple Podcasts, iTunes University, Apple Music, and Apple Film submissions. We sought to accomodate the unique needs of app developers with an improved log in experience, production analytics, app management across the variety of platforms, and apps store promotional asset submissions to App Review.

In this time, iTunes Connect would undergo a significant redesign and modernization effort. I was part of a group that looked to standardize patterns across all internal tooling starting with a rudimentary styleguide that would evolve into what is known internally today as "tidbits".

Throughout my time at Apple, I would collaborate with Design and Engineering leadership within the iTunes Connect org and across App Review and Developer Relations orgs to evolve critical tools for iOS, tvOS, and watchOS developers everywhere.



Green Room

Not long after TestFlight was acquired, the Beats acquisition happened and the design org doubled in size. With healthy exposure to what was evolving on that end of the spectrum, I took up a few pet projects to help out with the launch of Apple Music. Not only did I have the honor of getting to know the talented team behind Apple Music, I became an honorary test subject for Apple Connect and was invited to contribute to the design of internal curation tools that would drive the personalization behind the Apple Music experience.

Ahead of appropriate profile management tools for artists, the internal teams prepared to host a variety of data types and management tools for label artists that would take on a more customized look and feel within the Apple Music ecosystem.



tvOS

The release of the 4th generation of Apple TV unlocked a host of developer opportunities, especially in the gaming and film sector. TestFlight once again became the defacto distribution mechanism and took on similar patterns to the new App Store experience evolving specifically for Apple TV.

As part of the new App Store experience, The Apple TV team concepted a parallax interaction for all thumbnails and preview images for apps and film. To help creators simulate their multi-layered artwork, the internal tools team wanted to create a thumbnail previewer for pixel perfect execution.

This is the LSR previewer I designed in rapid iteration with a very talented OSX developer. Patterns lifted from most Apple OSX productivity tools like Keynote, and Pages apps.

For film content providers, Apple TV presented interesting opportunities to showcase extras as part of a movie purchase. tvOS extras preview app was a stand alone app that allowed content providers a quick and easy way to preview how their extras content would display in the Apple TV.

Deliverables:

Functional Prototypes
Storyboards & Mock-ups
Design Assets & Specs
Markup & CSS

Services:

Creative Direction, Product Direction, IA, Visual, Interaction, and UX Design.