From Sketch to Comp: The Story of a UI Redesign
July 17th, 2014 by Gage Pacifera
A while back I had the opportunity to do one of my favorite things that I do at my job: doodle.
Well, to be fair, I wasn’t exactly hired to doodle, but rather I was tasked with redesigning a user interface for FUSE Insight‘s Analyzer app that was sorely in need of a makeover. Some of the goals on the project were to make the app navigation/functionality more intuitive, to tastefully obscure links that weren’t used very often and to make the app look and feel more like a modern, pro web app. I did the early stage wireframing via pencil and sketchpad and then enlisted über-talented photoshop wizard Michael Fofrich to add his creative direction to the mix and flesh those out into comp form.
The improvement from the original design was, IMHO, pretty remarkable. It was fun to go through a process of rearranging functional elements to transform the UI into something much more elegant and useable. Mike faithfully transcribed some parts of the sketches into his comps and took liberties other parts to further improve the layouts. It was cool to see those unexpected improvements he added to the mix.