Perth Device Lab

The Device Lab was my passion project while working for Humaan and it was a great experience opening our doors to local developers, startups, students, educators, government agencies, suits, thieves and other curious visitors in my time as coordinator.

It was an open community space for testing web products on a range of devices and operating systems.

The lab is probably much like many other testing environments you might find in the web development industry. A collection of devices in a room. What make this lab different is that the doors are open to the public!

Design considerations

Before opened we dubbed the lab the Device Lounge. This reflected our intention for the space to be warm and welcoming for visitors. Somewhere you felt relaxed. Casual, conversational copy and a vibrant colour palette helped convey this online.

Functional design still has the opportunity for attention to detail, and here it presented itself in the sites header. The modular logo (designed by Kylie!) is subtly animated and is a composite of svg assets and CSS shapes brought to life with keyframe animation and blend modes.

We wanted the online and onsite experience to remain consistent (and positive) for our lab visitors. Someone making an online booking was greeted with a conversational form in an attempt to make the interaction feel as natural and engaging as a form can feel. Once submitted I would follow up with a phone call to quantify their needs and expectations, ensuring we could optimise the experience for them if possible.

Setting a performance budget

Typically you might start a design project with some rough sketches or a moodboard. This project begun with a performance budget. On first load the site needed to weigh less than 1mb on the common mobile viewport and less 2mb for common desktop viewport.

To help achieve this the design remained lean, css was written mobile first and we lazy loaded assets like large images and google maps

Usability workshops

Coming soon.