I joined Essential as the 10th employee and 1st UX/Product Designer. I defined the initial experience of the PH-1, which was stock Android but had some custom experiences (camera, setup wizard, magnetic accessories, etc.). I also contributed to some early decisions with the sales, hardware, and marketing teams. We grew to over one hundred employees in my couple of years there! Here are some of the projects I worked on.

Essential Camera & 360 Camera

One of the first experiences we had to nail down was the camera experience. I worked closely with our engineers to make sure our custom system camera experience was at the same level, if not better, than our competitors. Another thing that differentiated us from other smart phones in the market was our attachable accessories. Our first accessory was the 360 camera.

• How was this 360 camera going to work with the system camera?

• Would there be two different camera apps or would they work together in one app?

• How would this affect other accessories?

• What happens when the user detaches the camera while it’s being used?

These were some of the questions we had to work through. In the end, we created a seamless camera experience for both the system camera and the 360 camera and even created new features like Tiny Planet mode and 360 live-streaming through Facebook and Periscope.

More work coming soon. For now check out www.essential.com!