Hey Community,
I had the opportunity to sit down with Mladen M. Hoyss, Software Creative Director at Nothing, to discuss the evolution of Nothing OS and the future of smartphone interfaces. We met in London for a quick chat about his vision for the company, his unique perspectives, and his day-to-day work at Nothing.
During our conversation, Mladen shared insights on his journey from Blloc to Nothing, talking about the development of Nothing OS from version 1.0 to 2.0. He emphasised the importance of functional aesthetics in Nothing’s Design philosophy and how it shapes the user experience. Mladen also highlighted the crucial role of the Nothing community in shaping the future of the operating system, discussing potential avenues for deeper community involvement in the design process.
We also explored the challenges and opportunities in creating a distinctive smartphone interface that balances functionality with mindful usage, a topic Mladen is visibly passionate about.
I hope you find this conversation as interesting and insightful as I did!
Rohit (CBO): Mladen, thank you for joining us today. Your journey from co-founding Blloc to now leading software Creative Direction at Nothing is quite fascinating. Could you walk us through the key milestones of your career, how you transitioned from Blloc to Nothing, and how your experience with minimalist design and software development led to your current role?
Mladen: It’s been a journey, and a crazy one. I think what’s important for everyone to know is that I’m actually an industrial designer who has completely submerged myself into software. I believe this combination makes the experience long-lasting. What I truly care about and love is making design warm and human centric.
I started my own company, Blloc, in Berlin in 2016, and now looking back, it was kind of like Nothing, but way smaller, with a niche group of people. Funny enough, my co-founder and I also started working on a transparent phone.
Carl, at that point, was still at OnePlus. I’d been travelling back and forth from Berlin to Hong Kong and Shenzhen to develop this and sit down with manufacturers. I posted a couple of things on Instagram, and it caught Carl’s eye, and that’s how we met. Since then, we’ve stayed in frequent touch, talking about tech, art, design, and human nature whenever we could and time allowed.
The journey with Blloc was fascinating because we were working on a much smaller scale than Nothing. Back then, the tech industry was a very desaturated market, which gave us confidence that we could bring our vision to life. We learned the hard way how hardware works, how manufacturing works, and what software means to the product.
We learned very quickly after we launched our phone, the Zero 18, that there’s a honeymoon phase between the user and the device when it comes to the hardware experience. We made sure that the whole experience of ordering the phone, unpacking it, and holding it in your hands was very special. But then, after a while, what actually becomes your phone is the screen you interact with – the software you use every day.
About a month or two before the launch of Phone (1), Carl came to Berlin to talk with me about what’s next. He showed me the Phone (1) DVT, and coming from an industrial design background, I was completely amazed at how Nothing managed to do the transparent back way better than we ever did. Transparent tech is really hard to produce, and it looked amazing.
But when I turned the phone over and saw stock Android, I realised we had to do something about it. At that point, we’d known each other for a while. We always wanted to work together, but I had my own thing going on, and he was still in another company. We waited for the right moment, which was in the making for about four years.
So, I left Blloc to my co-founder, who’s still running it successfully. I really wanted the people who built our product at Blloc to come to Nothing. I was very lucky that this group of super talented people was willing to come with me to London and change their environment, all with one goal in mind: to elevate everything we’ve built so far and bring it to the next level. Nothing was the place to scale.
Rohit: What were the key moments that shaped your design philosophy during this transition?
Mladen: Nothing was kind of like Blloc but on steroids. We shared a lot of aesthetic similarities, but we had different missions. Our mission at Blloc was to literally make our users use their phones less. If they were to drop the phone and not use our product, that would actually be a success to us, which is a paradox, but it was our mission.
Nothing is doing things differently, bringing fun into the mix, and we were fans of that approach as well. It really transforms the relationship with the tech you’re using. So we had very similar aesthetics, but different missions. It was quite a challenge, but also so much fun to dig into that and explore the fun side of it.
‘Functional aesthetics’ was the design philosophy we followed when we created Nothing OS 2.0. I looked at stock Android, and it wasn’t ergonomic at all. It was kind of a mess, and even with 2.0, we haven’t achieved 100% of what we wanted because it was such a big undertaking.
For example, breaking the rigid grid system used in Android was something that I think none of our users can directly see, but it’s a crucial part of the backend design. This grid-breaking approach was functional, but it also brings the aesthetic to life. By breaking away from the standard grid, we essentially built a new foundation that allows us to be more creative and free with our design choices. This freedom extends to what elements we want to place, what kind of widgets we can create, and how these elements behave on the screen. So, while this grid-breaking process is largely invisible to users, it was fundamental in enabling all our future design work and innovations.
Rohit: That’s fascinating. I’m sure that there are some specific visual or aesthetic influences from Blloc that you brought to Nothing…
Mladen: Visually and aesthetically, I think it’s very easy to see. Blloc was a monochrome environment that was only bringing in one colour, and it was neon yellow, which we used as an accent colour. That neon yellow wasn’t my favourite colour or anything like that. It literally came from what is familiar to people in the physical world.
If you go on the street and see a construction site, everyone is wearing neon vests, right? It’s where your attention needs to go. If you have something very important to do, you would put it on a yellow post-it. Or back in the days when we used to circle job ads in the newspaper, you would use a neon marker to highlight those jobs you’re interested in. So it came from a colour that is already so present in our lives that it’s going to be very intuitive to bring this to the OS.
With Nothing OS, we wanted to go with a colour that is present in the identity of the brand, and that was red. Red is also a colour that seeks your attention if something is important or needs attention. So on a visual aesthetic level, this kind of monochrome with a little accent colour was inspired by Blloc and incorporated into Nothing.
Rohit: And as you pointed out, the transition of Nothing OS from 1.0 to 2.0 was quite radical. What were the key milestones in the development of the new generation?
Mladen: I would say the first two milestones weren’t particularly exciting in terms of visuals. They were really about cleanup. We were deconstructing the grid and working more on the experience.
I remember questions coming from my designers, and also from Carl. Everyone was asking, “How’s it going to look? What’s the creative direction?” My answer was always, “We’re going to get there.” What I meant by that is sometimes design emerges organically. In this case, it emerged very organically from the functionalities. Functional aesthetics, that’s exactly the direction we took.
The first step was kind of a cleanup, looking into, and picking out, what made it feel bloated or detached. Even with the launch of 2.0, it wasn’t 100% where we wanted it to be, because there was so much invisible work to do on the backend.
Native apps are a good example. It was so obvious when the community started asking for the phone app, messages, and calendar. I was thinking, “Yeah, we want this too.” But I think what people might not know is that we had a really small team, especially in the beginning. Now we’re growing.
I’m so grateful that everyone put their trust into the process and followed the mantra: “The design will emerge with functionality.” It was something we really needed to believe in because it gets people a bit nervous when there’s nothing solid, no candy for your eye right away.
But in the end, we got where we wanted to be. The design philosophy of Nothing OS evolved prioritising functionality and user experience, and aesthetics naturally followed through practical and intuitive design.
Rohit: Looking ahead to Nothing OS 3.0 can you give us a sneak peek into an exciting feature or design element you’re particularly enthusiastic about?
Mladen: I think with 3.0, the evolution will be very obvious. Nothing OS 1.0 was about giving breadcrumbs of what this could be. 2.0 brought the fundamentals, laying the foundation for us to build upon. With 3.0, we’ve taken our time to ensure things are really polished and refined. I believe it’s going to be the first time you’ll truly feel this being Nothing, with the DNA from software and hardware completely merged. If I could describe it in one sentence, I’d say it’s going to be one of the most beautiful experiences we’ve created so far.
Rohit: I have a request to be made. While features like Glyphs and focus modes are helping, we’re still using our Nothing Phones more than we’d like. Are there plans to enhance these features or introduce new ones to encourage even more mindful usage?
Mladen: Yes, there are. There are some native ways to do that. I think people saw the Glyph interface as a cool feature, but it’s actually a really mindful feature. Like with any productive software, you need to build a flow for how you use things. It’s the same with Glyphs and our software—we need to help users build a flow and figure out what works for them.
I think what we could do is invest a bit more time in guiding people through how they can get more out of Glyphs. We’re very focused on mindfulness as part of the design process. Blloc and Ratio were 100% focused on that, which maybe took out some of the fun, but it was more radical in that aspect. I think the experience with Nothing OS has the perfect balance.
It’s still, and I think forever, will be important to pay attention to being mindful. So in future versions, you can expect us to double down on this. We’re always striving to find that balance between functionality, aesthetics, and mindful usage.
Rohit: The Nothing community has been integral to the company’s growth. How do you envision the role of co-creation with the community in shaping the future of Nothing OS? Are there any specific areas where you see potential for deeper community involvement in the design process?
Mladen: First of all, massive thanks to the community. I really mean it—we would never be where we are as a company without their support. It’s very rare to have such a big community with this desire to be involved in the process.
It’s always a challenge, especially when it comes to design. Design is very subjective, like art. For us to bring external people into the design process is challenging because we have to protect the integrity of our design and DNA while also incorporating this personalised, external feel.
I expected it to be a bigger challenge than it was because people already love the aesthetics we’ve brought to the hardware and software. It was so much fun working on the wallpaper with Andrés for the Community Edition Project. As a designer, it was such a big learning experience to co-create with someone whoI personally hired. Andrés (@Andres_123) brought new perspectives that, in a micro way, are going to influence what we’ll do in the future. This is what really brings diversity to design.
Rohit: Have you been following any community software concepts? I’ve seen people creating everything from widgets to watch faces and apps as well.
Mladen: Yes, when we went to New Delhi and Mumbai, we met local designers who walked me through their designs in Figma, asking what I thought. There were some really good designs. There was also a designer, Aman (@aman ali), who I took a call with about watch faces. That was so organic, not even planned by anyone from the Community Team.
Software-wise, I think it’s a big opportunity. We’re not the smartest people on earth sitting in one room. There are so many brilliant brains out there that we can bring into the design process. I’m looking forward to this.
Rohit: Thank you, Mladen, for sharing your insights with the community. These are some fascinating perspectives on the future of Nothing OS. Any closing thoughts?
Mladen: The efforts of community members are making us unique as a company, and we’re very proud of it. Carl uses every moment in every pitch deck to give massive thanks to the community. From a design perspective, it adds a human touch. While studying industrial design, there was always this idea of perfect, clean design. But there’s a certain personality or character that you can bring to an object that makes it so much more interesting, more human. And I think this makes our company more human, having a community that really cares about what we do.
