The Orange App Center was born from a change in EU regulation, stating that Apple and Google needed to allow competition from other app stores.
Tasks
Because of this regulation change I was set the challenge of developing an Orange app store that could be pre-installed on all Orange phones, both iOS and Android operating systems, with a key focus on promoting Orange own brand apps.
My starting point for this project was competitor research, from both native and non-native app store services. It very quickly became apparent that there were other app stores available for Android that users were engaging with, and as expected none for Apple iOS.
From my research I began to get an idea of which components were regularly used and could be of use in the Orange app store and ways to promote Orange native apps.
Actions
With a path becoming clearer I began to design some wireframes and get a basic feel for how the app could be structured.
The next step was turning the wireframes into high fidelity designs, I began designing the components in Figma, putting each component through stages. I pushed each iteration to failure to ensure the final design was dynamic and responsive on all platforms. I explored layouts, structure and colour combinations but always staying within the Orange brand guidelines. All iteration stages provided a design I could progress with, and eventually a final design ready for development, this process was repeated for each component.
All components were built using the Orange design system, a well established design system used across their brand, I was happy designing with this design system and contributed on numerous occasions with new and updated components, iconography and illustrations, further improving their design system for future designers.
With the design ready it was time to handover to the developers, this was done using Zeplin for the assets, and Trello to manage the design and development progress, bug fixes and report any issues.
Results
The final outcome was an app store called Orange App Center, designed for iOS and Android. Orange App Center is available on all phones bought on the Orange network in Europe and Africa and has seen a large number of app downloads within the first 6 months and an increase in the number of users on all Orange brand apps.
