Sphero: BB-8 App Development

When I actually became a full-time Sphero designer in May, 2016 I was thrown immediately on app design for BB-8, which was now in full production. For the first six months there there was heavy focus on UI design for the software end of this project. Pretty tedious stuff, but there was some time for user experience design and thought about the future of the project post-release, should it hit - which we all felt it would.

Keep in mind, all of this was being done with very little knowledge of what would happen in The Force Awakens OR what BB-8 would actually be like in the film. Lucasfilm was very tight-lipped - even with us - at this point we didn't even know what BB-8 would sound like.

I have many hundreds - literally - of variations of design for all of the app screens - everything down to icons, of course. I personally find the details boring - but the process in a 'big picture' view is fun. The following screens show a visual diary of the app flow and changes to the visuals through development time. The final app looked and felt different still... Of course this app no longer exists as I designed it since Sphero released BB-9E and R2 along with an all new app that controls all three droids!

Here are some very early app icon designs I did - this was before Lucasfilm decided they wanted actual product renders of BB-8 to appear on the app icon...

Technical 'blueprints' of BB-8 I created based on the limited photo reference we were given - simplified for use in various places in early versions of the app experience.

Of course once the droid and the film were released we had a whole world of story to pull from to add additional content to the app experience to truly help tie it into the film. These are a few examples of experience ideas I explored in storyboard form...