Motion Sense for Pixel 4

art direction Figma game design ILLUSTRATION motion design motion system UI Animation ui design UI/UX

Art Direction & Motion Design

Google ATAP

2019

Motion Sense is a visual system for a touchless radar technology called Soli which understands human gestural communication from the significant to the subtle.

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For the technology's debut on the Pixel 4, Google ATAP needed to clearly communicate touchless interactions to a touch-centric audience, in a way that harmonized with Pixel visual systems and was easy to understand.

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Our response was to create a transient visual system, which seamlessly builds on familiar patterns in the existing ecosystem to help users build confidence in touchless interactions.

In natural human communication, a change in position, posture or gesticulation can signify vastly different meanings. There are even some social contexts where certain gestures may become unsuitable. Both of these are also true for Soli.

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To properly communicate how and when a gesture can be performed, visual elements reference natural human interaction. When touchless interactions are available, Soli’s movement resembles a person entering a room. When a left swipe gesture is performed, it responds by mimicking the gesture’s direction. If a touch event is detected, Soli moves out of the way to provide focus for touch interactions.

Gestural communication comes so naturally to many of us it’s almost completely invisible to our senses. Movement detected by Soli is similarly invisible and intangible so we asked ourselves, what other natural phenomena behave similarly?

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The Soli visual system references these spatial and temporal qualities of radar and human communication to reinforce the touchless interaction paradigm and improve comprehension.

Because of Soli’s novel interaction, various touch-points were created in collaboration with various internal teams and external organizations. From games, interactive tutorials, videos, illustrations and an open-source sandbox, users and developers were supplied with all the tools they needed to excel with touchless interactions.