Say hello to you.

For the past year, I’ve worked very quietly with some of the world’s most brilliant founders, engineers, designers, and product people, and I helped to create you.com from scratch. Today, on November 9th, 2021, I’m excited to announce that we launched the public beta of you.com, the world’s first open search engine platform that summarizes the web, superior privacy choices, 100+ search-apps, actionable results, and personalization through preferred sources. Our CEO and founder Richard Socher had the original idea to create personalized web summaries almost a decade ago. Earlier this year, when Richard assembled the you.com core team, I thought deeply about the most high-impact thing I could do with my skill set as a designer and entrepreneur? I believe that truthful and private search is the most critical application of the Internet, AI, and especially NLP today. With you.com want people to have agency in their information “diet” through personalization and customization and websites of all sizes to have a chance at being on the first page of a search when their content is relevant. I also believe in world-class privacy without having to tradeoff convenience and personalization. We offer a private mode that’s just one click away. No matter what mode you’re in — private or personalized — we’ll never sell our users’ data, follow them around the web, or offer privacy-invading targeted ads. https://you.com also opens up the closed gates of previous search engines by making relevant content readily available through multiple apps. For example, try finding the most relevant content across multiple sources at once. Sources like Reddit, Quora, Stack Overflow, or Medium would each need their own search query. On you.com, they are all searchable in one place with one query to allow you to explore a topic from many different angles. We also think you should be able to search less and do more. For example, if you’re a developer, we think you’ll like our StackOverflow and Code Complete apps that help you code faster with quick copy and paste buttons on snippets of code. Give you.com a try, and let me know what you think. I am grateful for your feedback, and I want to continue to build the next generation of searches together.

What goes around comes around

Apple’s recently released health app and fitness experience

More than a decade ago, we created advanced prototypes and submitted patents for what would eventually become Apple Health. While I haven’t been at Apple when they finally launched this new feature, I can say with great pride that I have been there when Apple tasked me and my engineering colleagues to create a personal fitness trainer and experience for Apple users — this long before the iPhone and iOS even existed.

Look, that’s us

Look again at that dot.

The cosmos and our place in it inspires the devices and experiences I create.

That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
I often try to remind myself of these things when creating a new design, especially during times like these.

Meet EMUI 11

Even years later after I left Huawei, the design improvements that my guidelines helped establish, still dominate the most recent designs of the company’s DNA. At Huawei Developer Conference (HDC) 2020 (Together), Huawei consumer launched its latest EMUI version, EMUI 11.

The new features of EMUI 11 include the artistic Always on Display designs and clock themes, improved multi-window mode, smoother UI animations, better multi-screen collaboration, and more. We designed the clock themes as early as 2016. Learn about the design process here, and look at “before” and “afters” here.

Meet Big Sur

Apple’s newly released macOSX ‘Big Sur’ looks and feels more like ios — The biggest change for macOSX is its new look. Big Sur brings the biggest redesign since the introduction of macOS and yet it looks familiar as it borrows a number of elements from iOS, including its customizable Control Center, where you can toggle Do Not Disturb, brightness, and other settings of your choice; with such features finally Apple closes the loop from a patent I help create years ago when we researched ways to change the luminosity of the screen — and even created one of many patents for Apple’s look and feel.

On #Black Lives Matter

Forgive me if you feel that what I’m about to write makes you uncomfortable, because you may have a different viewpoint about the following matter and don’t expect to read someone like me to write about human rights and political issues who publishes a website mostly dedicated to design. However, design is about humans and the collective history and narrative of how humans treat each other what makes this profession (as a designer) so fascinating and important.

Mural in Berkeley near Ashby St and Adeline Ave

For the past few weeks I’ve felt a need and a responsibility to weigh in the conversation and write something about the events unfolding and the horrific killings of George Floyd by a policeman kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes and Breonna Taylor being shot in her own home and the outpouring of protest that’s followed. 

I left Europe in 1995 for America not only because I pursued opportunities in design and technology following a scholarship I won for Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, but I also left (Europe) because of the repercussions and traumas that I inherited from my parents, who were children and victims growing up during World War II. They have witnessed and experienced some of the worst crimes humanity has endured, and I always and naively believed America was the savior and liberator from those perpetrators who were racists and Nazis in Europe harming and murdering millions of innocent people, simply because they believed that they were of the wrong ‘race’. Yet, quite unexpectedly, I’ve come to painfully witness especially since 2016 is that fear, hatred and racism against African Americans (not Jews, as I learned it in the past from my parents) are among the most powerful forces on earth and almost impossible to eradicate. This has really always been true throughout human history, but in American society we tend to focus only on a handful of their most strident expressions. And even then, we really only consider with any depth our finest moments, those historical events when we’ve been able to marshal truly potent responses: the Civil War, the Second World War (as I mentioned was perceived by me as European as Americans being heros and liberators), the Civil Rights Movement.

Now, more than two decade later — after having left Europe for good, I’ve also come to understand that the real menace of fear, hatred and racism lies not just in these flash points of history, when the contrast between freedom and tyranny are most stark. The real menace is in how infinitely adaptable and resilient these forces are.

Even after they’ve been put down, disbanded or made to heel, they find a way, again and again. They discard their censured hallmarks, whether it’s swastikas, skulls, chains, or segregation laws. And then they change — evolve — into new, more subtle ways of exerting their influence; they co-opt progressive ideals and insert themselves into virtuous agendas, and they assert themselves in popular culture and common language. Their inflection point, the moment when they’ve succeeded, is the moment when society at large accepts them as policies, as laws, as common sense, as pragmatism — while assuming that these methods apply to “other people.”

This moment in time is ripe with human potential, and we must act on it, and we must transform it from mass protests to structural change. But our challenge is also that we must also renew our vigilance and our ability to understand how fear, hatred and racism will adapt and change yet again. Because they will.

It feels distasteful to me to salvage any kind of a silver lining from the horror of George Floyd’s death, but I am grateful for the way that public support for Black Lives Matter and for systemic change in policing has surged over just a handful of weeks. That’s reason for hope that we all will engage in a dialog and awareness of this issue.

I’m also grateful for the clarifying light that these events have thrown on own my understanding, and humbled by the realization of how much I need to do to live up to the principles that I endeavor to pass along to my children. Particularly the idea that we cannot right the world simply by not doing wrong — we must do right, too, and particularly we must do right by those who have been perpetually wronged. Especially when their lives are being unjustly and viciously sacrificed by a brutal system.

I’m grateful for the understanding of how much work and processing we all really need to do. I will start today and remind myself about how much I need to learn, how much I need to ask, how much I need to listen, how much I need to speak up, how much I need to read, how much I need to expect of myself and of my family and my friends, how much I need to give, how much I need to change anything I can possibly change.

Color that isn’t.

Ever wondered about reality and what you see, for example, the nacre of an abalone shell, a soap bubble containing a rainbow or a blue butterfly. What you see doesn’t actually exist. There are no “pigments” that give the Morpho butterfly its mesmerizing shimmer; instead, Morpho butterflies’ wings create the spectrum of blue and indigo by causing white sunlight waves to diffract and interfere. You witness the Universe at work.

Nature inspired the devices and experiences of today.

Many types of butterflies use light-interacting structures on their wing scales to produce color. The cuticle on these butterflies’ wings’ scales comprises nano- and microscale, transparent, chitin-and-air layered structures. Rather than absorb and reflect specific light wavelengths as pigments and dyes do, these multi-scale structures cause light that hits the wing’s surface to diffract and interfere.

California Academy of Sciences (Abi Brody)

Cross ribs that protrude from the sides of ridges on the wing scale diffract incoming light waves, causing the waves to spread as they travel through spaces between the structures. The diffracted light waves then interfere with each other so that certain color wavelengths cancel out (destructive interference) while others are intensified and reflected (constructive interference). The varying heights of the wing scale ridges appear to affect the interference such that the reflected colors are uniform when viewed from a wide range of angles. The specific color that’s reflected depends on the shape of the structures and the distance between them. This way of manipulating light results in brilliant iridescent colors, which butterflies rely upon for camouflage, thermoregulation, and signaling.

Why the talk about structural light? Many people and the media have talked about Huawei’s ‘Twilight‘ gradient color scheme of the P20 Pro Series released in 2018, a little bit after I left Huawei. Available exclusively to the Huawei P20 Pro, the shimmering finish has been discussed ever since the color was first announced. Featuring a gradient that smoothly transitions from purple to blue then to aqua works in the same order laws of physics sort colors on the visible light spectrum as described above. Using the Morpho butterfly example — underneath a premium glass back, the Twilight variant of P20 Pro. So what inspired this sublime color scheme? One needs only look out of the window and gaze at the sky for the answer.

Twilight P20 Pro Series

That‘s right; it was nature, the world’s greatest artist of all time, that inspired us. Designing both the hardware and software, we have been taking cues from nature and the best of the best design and art. For the Twilight color, we were inspired by the Tyndall effect and the Aurora Borealis, or better known as the Northern Lights.

Northern Lights Aurora Borealis

It does not take formal training for one to appreciate nature, for our ability to perceive nature as a thing of beauty is innate to all of us. Throughout history, nature has inspired countless great painters to create great masterpieces. In China, court painters through dynasties transposed their impressions of the natural landscape onto paper using ink, water, and a brush. Towering mountains, rolling hills, and narrow rivers were painted onto scrolls of paper with lively brushstrokes, dots, and ink wash. This ancient art form, known today as guohua, is considered one of the most respected in classical Chinese art. In the West, greats such as Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh were also no strangers to nature. Monet rejected the stylistic norms of his time and developed his own way to capture nature's beauty, using his observations of changing lights to encapsulate the beauty he beheld. Just like some of the greatest artists throughout history, at Huawei, we were inspired by nature. We developed the dreamy color scheme to capture the magnificence and mysteriousness of the aurora. Careful decisions were made to ensure that when the gradient effect is shrunk to a handheld device's size, the phenomenal natural intensity will retain its full glory.

Good to know

Brilliant iridescent coloring in male Morpho butterflies enables long-range conspecific communication. It has long been accepted that microstructures, rather than pigments, are responsible for this coloration. Few studies, however, explicitly relate the intra-scale microstructures to overall butterfly visibility, both in terms of reflected and transmitted. We investigated the absolute reflectivity and transmissivity associated with the single-scale microstructures of two Morpho butterflies' species and the mechanisms behind their excellent wide-angle visibility with lasers. Measurements indicate that individual Morpho microstructures reflect up to 75% of the incident blue light over an angle range of greater than 100 degrees in one plane and 15 degrees in the other.

We show that incorporating the second layer of more transparent scales above a layer of highly iridescent scales leads to very strong diffraction, and we suggest this effect acts to increase the angle range over which incident light is reflected.

Measurements using index-matching techniques yield the complex refractive index of the cuticle material comprising the single-scale microstructure to be n=(1.56 plus or minus 0.01) + (0.06 plus or minus 0.01)i. This figure is required for the theoretical modeling of such microstructure systems. (Vukusic et al. 1999:1403)

A thing of beauty

Have you ever wondered, whether your software (or product) could be as beautiful as nature and touch humans in a similar way?

What if technology could be as beautiful and meaningful like a butterfly wing, or have the depth of a night sky in the desert? Or, what if it was almost invisible and soft like balmy air if it is only your content that matters, say when you want to edit a movie or sound clip, or write your novel or research material for your memoir? These are the type of questions my team and I have asked ourselves for over 20 years when designing products for the world’s most iconic companies, typically, with amazing outcomes. For instance, when designing ProKit, a new design language for Apple, we got inspired by glow in the dark creatures living in the lightless depths of the ocean, and the dashboards of a car, because we needed to create interfaces at Apple that would only show GUI elements on demand that people would use and need when editing film in a dark editing room.

Nature inspired the interfaces of today.

At Huawei when we created the look of the P-Series and needed to update EMUI, and give it its own ‘hallmark’ look and feel — different from anything that the world had seen before — we turned to nature again and got inspired by both, nature’s palette and forms. While we ensured that the human interface would fulfill all requirements of accessibility, it turned out that our preferred and primary color palette for EMUI, with a blue hue as the primary default color and an expanded palette with both analogous and complementary accent colors was an excellent choice, both from an aesthetical point of view. and in terms of usability: the user interface turned out to be clear and robust: clear because it helps people navigate the interface with distinct calls to action. Robust, because we accommodate all kinds of users, including the color blind. We succeeded to lower the cognitive load by lowering distractions. We not only keep people’s eyes solely focused on the essential aspects of the interface, but also created delight by eliciting positive, visceral reactions.  

P-Series ‘twilight’

Often some designers are criticized for wanting to create something beautiful. As if creating something that was a delight to the senses was superficial. I am a firm believer that design should not only be functional, but also aesthetically pleasing — to all senses, the visceral senses — also known as gut reaction — included. I also think that function and aesthetics aren’t mutually exclusive. I have learned, if you intend to create a product that works well, it should feel and look good, too. And, that being said, if something appeals, it doesn’t mean it was created to appeal on the surface only. Quite the contrary is the case. A deeply aesthetic design is usually the result of an elimination process where every element or attribute has been carefully considered until it has been designed and selected as a part of the final product or experience. Many nos to one yes. I am stating these observations not only from the perspective as a designer, but also as a student of the humanities and a musician — I was formally trained in classical voice and piano for many years, before I decided to focus on design at Art Center College of Design in the 1990s which were an important decade and turning point for design from analog to digital. Back to music: as many people know from their own experience, music is not only a great source of delight, it is also virtually impossible, to have people listen to a piece that’s performed somewhat out of tune and expect them to to enjoy it. Not without reason, humans love harmony. Something similar happens when people eat or prepare food. If there are too many ingredients in a dish, or the wrong kinds coming together, something isn’t right. Yet when the right flavors are combined, sometimes in a very unexpected way, magic happens. Therefore, great attention to every detail in design matters. This is my take on design, because everything can and should be in harmony, both functionality and aesthetics, not only those that appeal to the eye, but to other senses, too.

I visited with my team the California Academy of Sciences many times to learn about the life of color and other exhibitions. The Naturalist Center is home to hundreds of specimens and hands-on activities for all. We shot a Huawei documentary at the academy while creating the look and feel of EMUI and the new P-Series device.

Meet my new site and showcase.

…meet my new site & design studio showcase. Hi. Welcome to my site. So happy to have you around. 😃 You might be curious to learn who I am and how I approach my work and what I believe. You might wonder what’s that look about the butterflies and the sky? Well, I’ve created this site to help answer all these questions — at, least I’ll try — soon.

If you want to learn why I picked a blue-white color palette for my website and other design attributes, read my colophon page.

If you haven’t met me yet: I’m Abi Brody and I help make products, services and experiences that people love. Because what matters to people, matters to business too. If you just stumbled both on my site and this blog by chance, go ahead and explore. A great place to start is my ‘about’ page, ‘work‘ and ‘studio’. Perhaps you want to launch a new venture or business for the digital age. Amazing, because I love to help people and companies who want to change the world. Maybe you are just curious about me. Great! Whatever the reason, contact me and tell me how I can help.

25 years…

…ago I sat in a plane flying towards the US. I just was two days shy starting my scholarship summer program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and after finishing, I decided to stay in the US,my adopted home country, for good. The rest is history. To celebrate this occasion, I created a new site. As I’m going to continue to evolve and this site will evolve with me. My goal was to put something (fresh) out right now, so people can see what I’ve been doing over the past 25 years. Check out some of my work and the amazing people and companies I have worked with and for, today.