Imerj Dual Screen Phone

The Imerj Dual Screen Smartpad was a revolutionary product that could adapt to any task. In addition to its unique form factor, it was also capable of being docked into multiple devices and providing an optimized user experience for each.

This special combination of hardware and software required precision in design.

My Role

Principal Interaction Designer, Design Lead, Interaction Design Contributor

The Challenge

The Goal

The smart phone era had just begun and we recognized an opportunity to create a single product that could potentially replace a phone, a tablet, and a laptop.

Design a mobile platform and family of applications that could seamlessly adapt to multiple configurations; One small screen, two small screens, one large screen, and finally a full PC. No problem.

The Beginning

With Flextronic's decision to go forward on this ambitious project, I was brought in at the start to solve many of the complex interaction issues for a device with so many potential form factors. I was also brought in to design several key applications as well as manage the design of other applications being worked on by external teams.

The Design - Platform

Typically, most devices support up to two orientations; Portrait and Landscape. Our platform needed to support the following; Portrait Single, Landscape Single, Portrait Dual, Landscape Dual, Tablet Single Landscape Single, Tablet Single Portrait, Tablet Max Mode (1/3, 2/3) and finally PC Window mode.

Needless to say, this was a massive challenge. It was important for us to nail the platform early on, so that we could design all the application and system screens with confidence that they would not need to be refactored later. In addition to this, we needed to ensure that we could elegantly transition from one layout to the other.

The Design - Applications

The Imerj Dual Screen Phone could support any android application. But for our own native applications, we implemented extended functionality to fully take advantage of our multi-screen capabilities.

I personally designed several key applications for the device. Among the most challenging was the camera application.

An early hardware oversight to place the camera on the left screen, led to many design challenges that I needed to solve.

Fortunately I was able to turn what could have been a major obstacle, into something that felt like a magical feature.

Perhaps the most important application I designed was the web browser. In these early days before Chrome, browsers were often difficult to use and manage.

I needed to make sure that in single screen mode we had a world class user experience, and in dual screen mode we had something magical.

I personally designed many of the key Imerj applications and managed many more being designed by our partners. As a testament to the many innovations I was involved with, my work led to me being listed as an inventor on well over 100 patents.

The Design - Hardware Interaction

In addition to working on the applications and platform, I was also responsible for providing Hardware Interaction Specifications for all hardware interaction points. This covered areas like button behavior, docking behavior, folding and unfolding interactions, device charging and more.

Hardware Interaction specifications were produced for the handset, the tablet dock, the laptop dock and the charging cradle.

Below is a promotional video we created to show the device to potential business partners.

The Result

The Imerj Smart Tablet was a marvel of engineering and design. It succeeded brilliantly in both areas and completed full Google certification. Unfortunately we were unable to secure the commitment of one million units that was needed to move the project to mass production. It was a heartbreaking moment for the hundreds of us that put two years of our lives into this amazing product. Even after eight years, I still amaze people when I power on my device and show them what could have been.