Web engineering and design team

Discover the latest news and work from the web and design team.

The Web and design team at Canonical pride themselves on building things properly, not quickly. Always looking for creative ways to push the boundaries of the web.

Learn more from the web and design Portal ›

Canonical
6 August 2013

Calendar App Visuals

User Experience Ubuntu

Over the past few weeks we’ve been exploring visual directions for the calendar app. It’s a pretty exciting opportunity to create something fresh and at the same time useful. In this post I’ll take you through some of the directions we’re looking at right now and where we hope to eventually go. At this stage

Canonical
6 August 2013

Canonical
26 July 2013

Ubuntu Edge: Design process

Featured Ubuntu

Right… so where should we start? First post. Hello, my name is Chee, and I am an industrial designer. In this post I will share some materials, stories and process during the development of the Ubuntu Edge. We started off by pulling the key elements of the Suru theme, and expanded on that, in

Canonical
26 July 2013

Canonical
18 July 2013

Shorts visual exploration

Featured Ubuntu

Hey After all the work we have done on the Rituals app designs it was time to start exploring other core apps. I thought it would be good to share with you our recent exploration of the RSS Reader App. Please note that those are only the key screens and settings are not covered yet.

Canonical
18 July 2013

Canonical
12 July 2013

See your photos and illustrations in Ubuntu 13.10

Design Ubuntu

Each cycle we get together as a community to select some fine default wallpapers for the new release of Ubuntu. Your pictures and illustrations could be in the 13.10!

Canonical
12 July 2013

Canonical
2 July 2013

Unlocking the phone

User Experience Ubuntu

Edges are special to us. We use them for finding apps, tools and system services, so using the edges will be second nature to Ubuntu phone users. By using the launcher, how to launch your favourite app will become ingrained in your muscle memory of the left edge. The design vision behind Ubuntu for phones includes

Canonical
2 July 2013

Canonical
28 June 2013

Shorts: add, edit, share and adjust

Notes Ubuntu

In my previous blog post, we looked at the key screens for Shorts, the organic grid and the reading view. You can read about the list view behaviour in this document. In this post, I would like to look at journeys for adding and editing content, sharing an article and adjusting the reading view. Sharing

Canonical
28 June 2013

Canonical
25 June 2013

Latest design guides

User Experience Ubuntu

It’s been a while since our last update to the app design guides so I thought it was about time I shared the latest additions to this growing resource. Screen sizes A brief intro to the framework we use for designing for a scalable OS – the grid unit. With a link directly to a more detailed

Canonical
25 June 2013

Canonical
21 June 2013

Solving multiple calendar views

User Experience Ubuntu

One of the key challenges with designing calendar applications is the number of ways you can display your time, whether it’s by year, month, week or day. After a lot of good old fashioned hard work, we refactored navigation by making the tab header the key to switching between views. Although the direction I’ll take

Canonical
21 June 2013

Canonical
24 May 2013

Motion Graphics Presentation for Ubuntu Mobile

User Experience Ubuntu

This is a presentation of our ‘Paper’ Motion theme for Ubuntu Mobile. The theme is informed by the ‘paper’ graphic style of the mobile OS and we have sought to accentuate it wherever possible. Rather than using more overt effects like page curling and folding, we have hinted at the theme by using multiple layers,

Canonical
24 May 2013

Canonical
16 May 2013

Shorts, the RSS reader app

Notes Ubuntu

As you can see in the image above, I have spent some time looking at different types and contexts of reading, trying to understand what the reading experience might be for Ubuntu. The contexts of reading varies from libraries to magazine stands to the sofa in your lounge, and these each have an impact on

Canonical
16 May 2013

Matthew Paul Thomas
16 May 2013

System Settings for Ubuntu Phone

Notes Ubuntu

The design process for System Settings on the phone involved a competitor evaluation, identifying user journeys, generating many possibilities for the overview screen, and designing many individual settings screens.

Matthew Paul Thomas
16 May 2013

Alejandra Obregon
13 May 2013

Ubuntu.com update

Design Ubuntu

I’d like to give an update on upcoming plans for Ubuntu.com and to respond to recent concerns about the positioning of the community within the website. Earlier in the year we worked on an evolution of Ubuntu.com to reflect the expanded scope of the project in the main site structure. Our re-structuring conversations...

Alejandra Obregon
13 May 2013

Canonical
1 May 2013

Weather & Clock app visual exploration

Notes Ubuntu

Thank you for all your positive feedback after our first blog post. We are very excited and are continuing with the designs, here’s a quick update on how we’re getting on. During the last few weeks we have been looking at the development of the weather and clock apps. We are also looking at set

Canonical
1 May 2013

Canonical
26 April 2013

Responding to orientation

Notes Ubuntu

We have just published a new chapter on our App Design Guides : how to handle orientation. To cater for the different orientations of a range of touch devices, we need to design apps for Ubuntu in a responsive way. Phone orientations The primary orientation for an app on the phone is portrait. Consider using landscape...

Canonical
26 April 2013