The goal of the Anywhere app was to allow users to untether their phone number from their physical device, enabling calls and texts from any screen.
We wanted to preserve the native feel users expected when receiving calls or texts on their smartphone. Users stated their biggest concern was getting appropriately notified in a desktop environment.
User experience strategy, stakeholder interviews, competitive analysis, system diagrams, wireframes, UI design, prototyping, usability testing.
Due to technical limitations in how Android secures internal SMS and MMS databases, we could only access messages if we requested a specific permission during app installation. This required us to build our own mobile app.
Messaging apps are deceptively complex from a technical standpoint, so we chose to fork the native Messenger app and re-skin it with our brand and design patterns from the desktop app.
Due to the requirement that the tablet app work in both portrait and landscape modes, we needed to overhaul the layout structure. We found a design pattern that worked across both iOS and Android.
Users liked this layout so much they asked us to bring it into the desktop app as well.
The first round of designs tried to integrate the calling interface directly into the desktop app. The complexity this created when switching conversations during an active call made the concept unworkable.
Our solution was to launch the call interface as a separate modal, independent of the messaging UI, keeping both experiences focused and uncluttered.
