We looked at how Apple handles transitioning between devices with a series of features under the umbrella of Continuity. One feature, called Handoff, allows eligible apps to be moved, mid-process, to another Apple device. If you're using Safari on your iPhone and open up your MacBook, an icon will appear on your desktop asking if you want to open up a browser to continue reading that website.

From the initial vehicle analysis and noticing the broken mental model and disconnect between devices, I wanted to prioritize that feeling of using tech in a way that "just works".

My team and I took our user journey map through a series of brainstorming exercises and ended up writing out a variety of text-based concept flows. After several discussions, and refining some of these scenarios, this is where my concept proposal started to take shape.

One of the major things that people are averse to is seeing “Settings” pages when talking about a new feature or concept. With that in mind, I made a quick proof of concept just to show what a user might actually encounter during the actual event.

Talking with my team, I realized we would need a “home” for our concepts to work from, and we agreed on an iPad-sized screen for the center console, potentially utilizing MagSafe connections to use whatever sized screens the owner would prefer.

This new “prototype” shows a seamless interaction where the user doesn’t actually have to do anything. The devices realize they’re nearing each other and, at an optimal time, the active process (in this case, a FaceTime call) is automatically transferred over without the user needing to manually do anything.

With a revised concept of how the transition should actually occur, it quickly became apparent that the active process should take precedence over other tasks, i.e. a FaceTime call should become, hierarchically, the most important active app on the screen.

Since the phone can be placed on the MagSafe dock and used as an additional screen, we can move the clock off of the main screen’s Tab Bar. This gives us space to use the Tab Bar to form the equivalent of the Dock, which is in familiar use on many other Apple devices. This change means that the active process can now utilize the entirety of the screen.

Like many of Apple’s features (such as Apple ID and Continuity) the magic is happening behind the scenes, and adjustments have to be made in Settings and Profiles. Showing a Settings page is a boring way to promote a new concept, especially because it’s not the part that will be most interacted with. This prototype shows how the actual user experience will play out.