Motorola | Smart Texting

Motorola | Smart Texting

A major focus of my career at Motorola was text input and messaging which drove the mobile phone boom at the time. I worked closely with a human factors specialist and a team of developers on smart keypads for texting.

Designing within micro-interaction patterns, this work required harnessing smarter but also more complex behaviors that predict not only characters, but entire words and phrases.

The solution centered around a simple 4-way pattern with a clear visual markup. The patented design became a key differentiateor in Motorola’s phone portfolio—including their flagship RAZR product—and shipped worldwide in millions of handsets.

 

Input context: The design works with a range of input contexts e.g. forms, fields, and emoticons.

 

Visual design markup: Details of the visual elements.

 

Interaction diagram (example): Clear documentation of all the states was critical.