Mate & P Series Themes
UX Design, Themes, and Home Screen Design
My role: Chief Designer and Vice President, Huawei Consumer + Individual Contributor
Once appointed Chief Designer and VP of Huawei Consumer in 2015, I was put in charge of guiding the development and redesign of Huawei’s range of leading smart device products’ user experience. I reported directly to Richard Yu CEO of Huawei Consumer, and Chenglu Wang, President of CBG Huawei.
Shown here is a small showcase highlighting the Mate and P-Series and their wallpapers — aka ‘themes,’ that were designed to blend entirely and seamlessly with the industrial design of Huawei’s devices. All work had been done in collaboration with the incredibly talented Joonsuh Kim (VP of industrial design, Huawei) and other amazing individuals I’ve gotten to collaborate with. I wish I could give credit to every single team member, everyone; however, that’s simply not possible: a great shout-out to you all.
Working across departments
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 2000s. 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, especially when Huawei announced the integration of the Leica functionality and brand. Again, nothing is being done alone — the UX has been created in cooperation with Huawei’s incredibly talented VP of Industrial Design Joonsuh Kim.
In 2015 the smartphone market had already been very congested no matter where you looked — China, Europe, the US – the list went on. To stick out of the crowd, we needed a vision, inspiration, and plans. At the time, many people might have laughed at Huawei’s high ambitions. It was aggressive and forced us to make big changes very quickly in the company.
Our vision was to become a truly global player and create genuinely great-performing products that not only satisfy the user from a performance and design standpoint but smartphones that can be offered at an affordable price point. We called this mindset ‘true value’, and it was another core theme at the time.
To accomplish our goals, Huawei has set up offices around the world that aim to draw inspiration from different regions. When I joined, they already had offices in China, Korea, Western Europe, and emerging markets. To draw inspiration, I added the design studios in the US *San Francisco and Santa Clara) and one in Munich, Germany. So it’s clear that Huawei has invested in its global design research. The results and market share speak for themselves.
Aesthetic design leadership.
In Paris, we had an ‘aesthetic design center’ where we have been consulting with the design and fashion industries and follow trends in the fashion world. We also collaborated with Pantone© to create color palettes and -finishes. Based on feedback that we have been collecting, we developed new goals every year to work towards in the design space.
The inspiration for both the company’s flagship series came, like I mention in my Apple design casestudy about how we were inspired by transportation design, similarly creating an experience for a device and its ecosystem; you want reliable functionality, be able to focus on what matters, and yet, there are discernible hallmarks of the brand, for example: when you see a car passing by out of the corner of your eye, you can easily recognize that it was either a Tesla or Beetle. In a way, that’s what we’ve been attempting to do with Huawei’s consumer devices and the UX. We truly have been exploring ways to innovate with new materials, color finishes, and textures to allow for the product design to be both functional and beautiful.
Building an emotional connection with the user not only through the user interface but also through the finishes helped build the consumer base faster than anything. I was brought to Huawei to help bring a certain design language to the UI and user experience of their flagship devices while still differentiating between the two brands — Huawei and Honor — that they’ve worked so hard to build up. Devices that have top-of-the-line specifications and are generally more premium have been launched under the Huawei brand. On the other hand, the company’s Honor brand is meant to appeal more to young consumers. Devices that are more affordable and therefore accessible but don’t skimp on the goods have been carrying the Honor brand name.
Perhaps Huawei is on to something with their idea of true value. Shipments for the Honor brand jumped from 1 million to 20 million worldwide in 2014 alone. What’s more, the company’s overall smartphone sales grew by a massive 33% just last year. As you can see, it’s clear that the company has a good set of ideals that are already showing some positive results. And whether these standards finally break them into the US smartphone market or not, Kim’s design values and goals will keep making Huawei a big player in the global market.
What People Are Saying
“Huawei’s press conference this morning is likely to be one of the most interesting of CES 2016. ”
— Source 9to5 Google
“Huawei Eyes U.S. Smartphone Market after Stellar Year of Sales Growth”
— WSJ
About
Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. With integrated solutions across four key domains — telecom networks, IT, smart devices, and cloud services – Huawei is committed to bringing digital to every person, home, and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. As one of Huawei’s three business groups, Huawei Consumer BG covers smartphones, PC and tablets, wearables, mobile broadband devices, family devices, device cloud services, and AI. Huawei Consumer BG is dedicated to delivering the latest technologies to consumers and sharing the happiness of technological advances with more people around the world.
The Huawei P series is a line of high-end Android-powered smartphones produced by Huawei, and the Mate series is Huawei’s “phablet” version. Since 2016, Huawei has been in a co-engineering partnership with the German manufacturer Leica, whose lenses have subsequently been used on both Huawei Mate and P series. worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.