Skype Qik for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone

Three smartphones on a wooden surface displaying various social media or video chat apps, with the middle phone showing a close-up of a woman with glasses and a striped shirt.

Skype Qik was a fast-paced, exploratory project born within a cross-functional ‘Tiger Team’ at Skype. The goal was to design a fun group video messaging app for quick, frequent interactions—not planned calls.

I led the design vision and execution from 0 to 1, building and managing a dedicated design team to deliver a unique experience across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.

My role and leadership impact

✅ Initiated and led product design strategy from ideation through launch

✅ Defined interaction models solo in early stages, then secured stakeholder buy-in to scale the team

✅ Collaborated with executive management, product, engineering, and QA teams across all platforms

✅ Maintained a unified design with platform-specific deltas for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone

✅ Led the product experience across a multi-disciplinary team, including:

3 Visual Designers

2 Interaction Designers
1 User Researcher
1 Web Developer

Project overview

Challenge

Traditional Skype video calls were coordinated, synchronous events. In a world trending toward instant, asynchronous communication—especially among younger audiences—this model felt increasingly outdated.
Duration

8 months of incremental delivery across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
Goal

Bridge the gap between synchronous (live calls) and asynchronous (messaging) video communication with a mobile-first, frictionless experience.

Business goals

Single purpose, snackable app
Phone number based, no Skype ID. Resolves with Native Address Book contacts.
Videos uploaded to server. Downloaded completely to remote parties’ devices before they are notified.
Conversation history kept until SDCARD allotment is exceeded...after which old clips can be downloaded for viewing again.
Playback is continuous and not interrupted and without transition delays

Strategy and Approach

Stakeholder interviews

Stakeholder interviews across product, engineering, design, and business
Competitive analysis

Deep competitive research: Snapchat, Vine, Glide, Slingshot, Bebo Blab, Samba, Relay, and more.
User research

Behavioral and attitudinal user research, with a focus on ages 10–24
Design

Information architecture with simple hierarchy
Interaction design model with gesture based interactions that is immersive and unique
Visual design expressed the Skype brand in a coherent and stylish way
Implementation

Worked across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone teams to deliver continuously over an 8 month period from the start of the project to initial release on IOS and Android. The team worked in 2 week sprints with Design being well ahead of dev teams

Research

Overview

Ongoing research was conducted remotely by the research team on sync and async communication. This included focus groups and exploratory research to gain insight into how people currently use video messaging vs. traditional methods of communication.
Key insights

Younger people were most likely to be attracted to a product that recorded and shared videos
Ephemeral apps like Snapchat are more popular than traditional calling, or using traditional texting methods like iMessage among the 10-24 age range
Younger demographic prefers async communication methods to synchronous
Most short form video apps used a vertically scrolling chat model similar to Skype or other IM applications. Most of the differentiation between apps was with filtering the video or with degrading the messages over time.
Goals and motivations for 10-24 year olds

Have fun and be goofy with friends, self-expression is most important
SMS for video: Catch up quickly through asynchronous video vs synchronous calling
Use communication tools parents do not use

Design principles

Zero Friction Recording

Swipe down to instantly access the camera. A persistent viewfinder peek made recording feel always available.
Lightweight UI with Purpose

No social feed, no clutter—just direct conversations.
Simple gestures: flick down to record, up to browse, tap to watch.
Immersive Conversation Model

Traditional vertical chat replaced by a horizontal video timeline, enhancing continuity and making interactions feel cinematic.
Cross-Platform Consistency

A single source of truth in design specs with platform-specific notes ensured cohesion across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone

Design

Top level / default view

We wanted the structure to be very lightweight and simple. We didn't want a social feed or other features that distract from the primary goal of direct communication.

We wanted to leverage gestures to invoke the record state.

Flick it down, the camera appears.
Flick it up to scroll recent conversations.
Tap on a conversation to view the video messages

The core screens include a top level view where video conversations are visible, a recording screen to capture the video, a conversation view to playback individual videos within the conversation.

Screen showing a messaging app with notifications from a pool party group chat, a message from Kian Lambert, and a list of participants including Agnes, Blake, Nahal, Ni.

Design

Recording

The camera / recording interface can be invoked by tapping on the affordance at the top of the view, or by using the swipe down gesture.
The camera used a countdown timer to indicate how much time is available for each video message.

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Design

Conversation view

For the conversation view, we considered a video timeline rather than a traditional vertically scrolling chat.
We tested both models and as it turned out, the horizontal video timeline model was also a great way of allowing the UI to be more conversational by allowing it be viewed like a movie.
We decided on using the horizontal video timeline model for the conversation view because it was a more engaging experience with less transitions and more focus on content.

Cross-platform design

Skype Qik for Android

Because we targeted releasing on Android first, I created a single design spec that had delta sections for iOS and Windows Phone that identified where each platform's design patterns may be different from the Android spec.
This enabled us to have consistent documentation and experiences across the platforms by leveraging common patterns.

Cross-platform design

Skype Qik for iOS

The Android and iOS designs were aligned, but also platform specific clients. The spec here shows how the apps core interactions are the same across iOS and Android, with some platform specific differences due to the native components being leveraged.