Skype Location Sharing

Windows Phone/ Android

One of the first projects after joining Skype was to design the location sharing feature for the mobile clients. At the time Microsoft put a lot of emphaisis on their own mobile OS so I figured I should start from Windows Phone and scale up to Android and iOS. After completing an investigation around developing constraints I wanted to focus on how we could brand the experience in a subtle but significant way. In order to work around major system limitaions such as search and points of interest it was clear that I had to find an alternative solution to the more established mobile maps patterns. I flipped the limit in a branded moment fixing the pin at the center of the screen and allowing the user to pan the map underneath it. In this way the action of panning triggers the first branded moment when the pin "jumps" up with an elastic bounce and drops down, with another accentuaded bounce whan the user stops panning. The inormation panel at the bottom of the screen then displays the information of that specific location surfacing the text with the same motion curves as the pin. The entire flow has a nice rythm and reflects one of our main brand attributes: everything in Skype should feel natural and build human connections.