Pancake/French Toast/UX

French Toast

French Toast is our code name for Pancake's next-generation user interface.

Design themes

Every good app is designed around a core job. This job is the reason a you open the app. On devices like iPad and iPhone, the importance of the job-to-be-done is critical. Where one app ends and another begins hinges on the job you need to do. French Toast's job-to-be-done is "help me find x". To make this happen, we're focusing on creating a brilliant search and curation experience.

We've designed French Toast around some core user experience mantras:

• "Don't do what I say, do what I mean". Use search and intelligent interpretation to help users arrive at what they mean. Instead of presenting the user with error-prone tasks like typing in a URL, why not give them helpful hints with type-ahead search?
• Search is about exploring. Exploring is fun on touch devices. Topical search pages become dashboards for your query, presenting different types of widgets, relevant to the type of search you're doing. Search terms are intelligently interpreted to present information that is related, even if the information is not a text match. Search tabs allow the user to view results for their query through different lenses.
• "Don't make me type". Typing on touch devices is hard. If the user has invested the time to type out a search, we need to make sure they don't have to type it again. A search timeline offers an easy way to hop between searches. Pinning makes it easy to curate the things you do find, and share them with others.
• Privacy is tied to identity. Privacy isn't a switch switch you toggle. When I say privacy, I mean how do others see me? Privacy means making it obvious what is associated with your identity. Some things I want to keep to myself, other things I want to share with the world. Tell the world I think something is cool, that endorsement changes the way people see me. Everything is anonymous (private) unless you broadcast that you like it (pinning).

Design Files

• File:French-toast-wireframe-artboard.pdf: a wireframe artboard exploring French Toast's UX concepts.
• File:French-toast-ux-animated-wireframe.tar.gz: An early animated keynote wireframe exploring interactions in French Toast.