A tablet operating system designed for HP, from first research to the final screens, one calm, considered surface for how people work and play on the device.
An operating system, rethought for the HP tablet.
HP came to me to design an operating system for their tablet, built for college students and working professionals. The device clips onto a keyboard and turns into a laptop in an instant, so the OS had to feel natural in both modes. The catch: the whole system had to run on Google's optimised design system, rebuilt from the ground up with HP's own tokenisation and branding. I took it from research and UX through to the final UI, across dozens of screens and six core modules.
A brief, and a blank canvas.
HP's ask was open: design an OS for a tablet that becomes a laptop, aimed at students and working professionals. Two audiences, two modes, one product that had to feel like a single thing whether it was in your hands or sitting on a desk. The one hard constraint was to build everything on Google's design system, yet make it unmistakably HP through custom tokens and branding.
Understanding how people actually use a tablet.
I spoke with students to understand what they really need from a tablet, what they use it for, how often they switch modes and what they expect from that switch. Then I sat with a student using the device and watched the real behaviour: how often they rotated between portrait and landscape, which apps they lived in, which features they borrowed from other brands, and how they felt about widgets. Those sessions surfaced the patterns that shaped every module, chiefly that this audience multitasks constantly.
Structure before surface.
The clearest signal from research was multitasking, so I built the experience around making it effortless. I gave widgets their own dedicated page to the left of the homepage, where students keep their most used, personalised widgets always on. I added a right panel that surfaces recently used and suggested apps. For the mode switch I placed a control in the top navigation, so moving from tablet to laptop is quick and deliberate. And I shaped the camera around how they really use it, scanning and video calling. I pressure tested the flows as wireframes and a prototype before committing.
A calm, confident visual language.
Although it sits on Google's tokens, the system was built from scratch. I wanted branding that felt simple, minimal and clearly HP, while still feeling at home on Android. The gestures, interactions and overall direction are drawn from the real world, so the product feels tangible in the hand, and in laptop mode it reads as one continuous machine rather than a tablet pretending. I added sound, customised every icon and graphic, and invented a set of shapes specific to the OS.
Five surfaces that carry the whole experience.
Homepage
Fully customisable, keep it sparse or pack it dense, whatever suits the student. The moment you land you sense a widget panel to the left and more apps to the right, everything accessible and readable from one surface.
A flexible grid with soft depth and a wallpaper forward layout, so a personal home stays calm however much lives on it.
Quick Settings
The controls students reach for most, brightness, volume, connectivity, one swipe away and ordered by how often they are actually used.
Tactile toggles and sliders with unmistakable states, laid out so the whole panel reads at a glance.
Right Panel
A panel on the right that surfaces recently used and suggested apps, so the next thing you need is always a reach away, never buried.
A translucent surface that layers cleanly over any screen and slides in without pulling you out of what you were doing.
Multitasking
The behaviour students do most, made effortless. Split views, floating windows and fast switching, so the tablet works like a full workstation.
Clear window chrome and natural gestures for resizing and snapping, so arranging two or three things at once feels obvious.
Camera
Designed around how this audience actually uses a camera, built to be scanning friendly and video call friendly first.
A viewfinder first interface that stays out of the shot until you need it, with modes a single swipe away.