Huawei Consumer
Devices, wearables, web, and the Huawei consumer ecosystem
My role: Chief Designer and Vice President, Huawei Consumer + Individual Contributor
During my role as Global Chief Designer and VP, my job was to simplify Huawei consumer’s entire design ecosystem. Working across all of Huawei’s business groups, this effort led to the redesign and rebrand driven by the design charter — design that’s driven by people’s intentions.
We’ve created a brand-new comprehensive design system that encompassed the appearance, design patterns, animations, sound effects, AI, VUI, and entire ‘smart’ ecosystem for Huawei, including ‘EMUI’ their Android customized GUI for their Mate, P and Honor series, a look that’s has been inspired by nature, the azure sky of the Mediterranean and the Universe in general. This new look inspired Huawei’s hardware, because the tyndall-effect allowed for natural gradients of Huawei’s devices.
I joined Huawei Consumer in 2015, prior to holding the position of Head of Design at a stealth GoogleX spinout Helix (formerly Flux), and prior to that I was at Apple for the majority of the first decade of the 2000’s. I wasn’t just in charge of software user experience design, while I had my tenure at Huawei Consumer. I was invited by my peers and the CMO to help consult/ overlook every product that they launched whether it was the Huawei Consumer or their Honor brand. I also worked on every product launch in close cooperation with the CMO, Glory Zhang, especially when Huawei announced the integration of the Leica functionality and brand with the Mate and P-series.
Again, nothing is being done alone — the US has been created in cooperation with Huawei’s incredibly talented VP of Industrial Design Joonsuh Kim and other talented individuals.
What People Are Saying
“We are excited to welcome Ms. Abigail Brody to the HUAWEI family. Abigail’s rich experience will help substantially improve HUAWEI’s UX design development thereby consolidating our leadership and competitiveness in UX globally,” said Mr. Richard Yu, CEO of HUAWEI Consumer BG. “Improvement in UX design has and will continue to be a key focus of HUAWEI Consumer BG in our trajectory to becoming one of the world’s most favourite smartphone brands.”
— Huawei
“On the brand-new EMUI […], the change in UI design is immediately evident, even before the phone is unlocked. Magazine unlock, a feature unique to EMUI that displays a new lock screen wallpaper every time the phone wakes up […]. The UI [EMUI] takes inspiration from magazines, with more white space and a soft color palette.”
— Android Authority
How a Former Apple Designer is Updating Huawei’s Look: […] It’s an interesting turn of events: a Chinese company that wants to be like Apple hires a former Apple designer to make its smartphone software look less like Apple’s.
— The Information
My role at Huawei
I was appointed Chief Designer of User Experience at Huawei Consumer in summer of 2015 to head up Huawei Consumer design unit ranging across a big spectrum from wearables to smartphones, tablets, VUI, to AR/VR, and more. With a renewed focus we introduced the world to Huawei’s sophisticated new look and feel. Here is some amazing work we did. I lead a team of 80 designers in developing experiences and the look and feel for HUAWEI Consumer BG’s range of leading smart device products. In conjunction with my appointment, I established UX R&D design studios in Silicon Valley and San Francisco in the United States.
Within less than 24 months after joining Huawei, I’ve helped transform the company’s fledgling digital team to become an inspired, global world-class design organization. My division guided and delivered the design of the company’s digital and physical products across a wide range of domains and disciplines, including the user experience, visual design and branding for smart devices, wearables, the smart home, AR and VR, and cloud services. While heading an existing global design team of 80+ employees with offices based in China, Europe, and the US, I set up a brand-new, inter-disciplinary R&D team in San Francisco.
In my role as Chief Designer, I was also invited to advise the Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei Consumer BG, Glory Z. I supported her creative strategies during numerous product launches, keynotes and the rebranding and redesign of the company’s wordmark. Shown here is a brief sampling of high profile projects* that I have been leading — specifically UX design work for flagship products like the Mate and P series, EMUI 5+, etc. — and also work that has been influenced by my leadership. *all of this work has been already published or shown elsewhere by Huawei, or the media.
Team credits
Shown here is information about Huawei’s GUI and applications that I’ve helped design and lead over the years, done in collaboration with incredibly talented people, who I’ve gotten to know and enjoy. A few names come to mind without most of this great work would not have been possible:
Simon Ekstrand, Kevin Ho, Bongwon Lee, Wayne Goodrich, Jin Wang, Tyler Walseth, Richard Yuchendong (Yu), Brian Zeitler, and many, many more — I will give credit to more people soon, and I wish I’d give credit to each and everyone, however, that’s simply not possible: thanks to you all.