From automatically unlocking doors to ordering lunch, how might we show users a powerful—but invisible—network of possibiilties around them?
Proxy was a series-B startup building technology that made our built environment magical, from doors automatically unlocking as you approach to a room's temperature customizing to your preferences when you enter. Proxy tech combined advanced sensing, environmental control hardware (door locks, etc.), and a suite of software that powered Proxy's domain awareness system.
The work we did set Proxy up for an acquisition by Oura in spring 2023.
I joined Proxy as the second software product designer, partnering closely with the CEO to redesign our suite of apps and explore new R&D initiatives.
Proxy was a series-B startup building technology that made our built environment magical, from doors automatically unlocking as you approach to a room's temperature customizing to your preferences when you enter. Proxy tech combined advanced sensing, environmental control hardware (door locks, etc.), and a suite of software that powered Proxy's domain awareness system.
The work we did set Proxy up for an acquisition by Oura in spring 2023.
I joined Proxy as the second software product designer, partnering closely with the CEO to redesign our suite of apps and explore new R&D initiatives.
A quick note about financial product case studies
The designs below are concepts that include fake data for illustrative purposes. The names and numbers in these designs are completely made up at random and do not reflect any person, company, or group’s past, present, or future plans. Even where a group or person's name may bear similarity to a real-life group or person, the numbers and other data associated with it are random. Any similarity to real life events are purely coincidental. Nothing contained herein is or should be construed as investment advice, legal advice, solicitation or encouragement to conduct any financial transaction, or an ad for any current or future offering of any token or security.
Your Proxy Signal
At the heart of the Proxy experience are magic moments of interaction between people and spaces. A door unlocks automatically as you approach, for example. These are made possible by the Proxy Signal—a personal identifier beacon broadcasting from your phone that identifies you to sensors in your environment.
The signal’s power is in its magical, invisible simplicity. But if, as the saying goes, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and magic by its nature is mysterious, we inherently face a unique challenge in conveying what this signal is and what it does. People are used to products whose interfaces are about buttons and form fields—not intangibles like movement through space, time, and context.
We knew it would be important for us to convey this signal concept in a way that was understandable, but also that was unique and branded. We worked collaboratively with Huge to reimagine how we could communicate this intangible concept in visual and linguistic terms to make our product more intuitive and our brand more impactful.
A new visual foundation
Visualizing the signal
We worked with the creative agency Huge to reinvent the Proxy brand. At the center of that work was a difficult challenge: making a fundamentally invisible product, tangible. For that reason, much of the exploration focused on ways to visualize the invisible “personal” signal that enabled the magic of the Proxy product.
I helped lead work in this section, alongside Mike Bienhoff (Proxy) and Richard Llywelyn Swain (Huge)
Work in this section was created in close collaboration with Ian Jaye
The redesigned Proxy app is built around a dynamic gradient field that visualizes your Proxy signal
We positioned this visualization at the top of the display since that’s actually where it emanates from; most phone hardware concentrates antennas at the top, especially for NFC. That also matches what most users believe; we found many people have become accustomed to such signals coming from the top of the device from use of NFC services like Apple Pay.
In further iteration, we also designed a notification area to live “inside” the signal. Since in-app notifications show interaction opportunities from the nearby physical environment, it’s intuitive that these controls show in the context of the signal. Think of it like something emerging from the fog, or finding something with a flashlight in the dark.
In this design metaphor, the user “pulls” these controls down from the top, as if out of thin air above the phone. Moreover, users are already accustomed to notifications appearing at (and being stored in) the top of the phone, so this was a natural metaphor for users to learn.
We developed logic for how and when an environmental signal would be considered strong enough to surface it to the user. This is surprisingly complex since a number of factors influence signal strength and apparent distance, and environments vary dramatically in device density. Too sensitive and the user is be overwhelmed, unable to distinguish between devices; too insensitive and the system feels frustratingly sluggish and un-magical.
From a UX standpoint, we found a substantial difference between types of devices; for instance, check-in kiosks and door readers. The former was a sort of wayfinding element about which we had high confidence—a guest who hadn’t been here before definitely needed to check in, so we should make them aware of that ASAP. But the latter, a door, should only be unlocked when we’re close. 3 meters turned out to be about the right distance time-wise for the average walking speed.
This contextual discovery tool is useful even—or perhaps especially—if access isn’t available. With limited ability to show these states on the readers themselves, the app UI is important to convey context and avoid the perception that a device is broken or unresponsive.
Discoverability of the environment also means that anyone, not just admins, can self-serve and resolve issues themselves. As any building manager knows, they get far too many urgent support requests late at night already.
People can also discover each other, if they’ve opted-in. This is particularly helpful in cases where an individual event host—not a permanent building—needs to check people in.
If you turn your Proxy signal off, it immediately recedes and feels lifeless in static gray.
Since this is a blocking state that prevents use of the app’s functionality, the only UI is a notification card that lets the user turn their signal back on.
Interactions with hardware
Work in this section was created in collaboration with Clem Puertolas, our team’s industrial designer.
From left: Reader, Ring (via Motiv acquisition), Mini reader (embedded in existing access system) Nano reader (embedded in existing housing), and Apple Watch