Apple Relay
Third party in-store retail experience
Apple sets the bar for in-store experience. Here's how I made sure every interaction met it.
Role
Interaction designer. I owned the interaction layer while another designer led visual design, and we shared layout decisions.
Outcome
Shipped as part of the Mac in-store refresh.
MEET MAC: IN-STORE EXPERIENCE
CONTEXT
In third-party retail stores, Mac pricing and specs lived on paper table cards. The goal was to replace them with an experience that lived on the Mac itself.
The experience started as a widget on the Mac’s desktop that opened into something fuller. How it expanded, how it closed, and how it behaved on a device people were actively exploring shaped every decision.
THE PROBLEM
The first view leads with what people come to find: model name, price, key specs, and payment options. View Other Models lets people compare the lineup without leaving the screen. We tried several layouts for comparison, and stacking the configurations read most clearly.
APPROACH
This is where most of my work lived. The opening had to be fast and clean. The platform left no room to be clever.
Color changes fade instead of switching. A hard switch feels cheap and a fade feels considered, and that small difference carries a lot of how premium the experience feels.
The modal slides down to open and back up to close. The header moves behind the second plane and fades back in on it.
People come to the store to look at the Mac. If they notice the interaction, something went wrong
DESIGN DECISIONS
View colors: A fade instead of a hard switch.
Opening: Fast and clean.
Header: The header moves behind the second plane, and reappears fading in on the second plane.
Modal: Slides down to open, back up to close.
The experience shipped as part of the Mac in-store refresh. I wasn’t given the results. The standard we were held to was that every interaction had to be right, and the interaction and layout had to be solved together.
OUTCOME
Small interaction details carry a brand’s standard as much as the visual design does. Timing is something you tune by watching people, and next time I’d want to see someone use it in store.