Understand cross-platform design through Muse

by Asuka Li

Any creative work is inseparable from a whiteboard that can organize and summarize ideas. In response to the need to organize ideas, many great business applications have been created on different platforms, such as Miro, Mural, Limnu, and Muse. Muse still has its unique characteristics, because it is a tool that truly applies the concept of the whiteboard to the design concept and uses the interaction characteristics and advantages of different platforms to improve the experience. 

Muse for Mac: productivity, heavy research, bulk editing 

The concept of Muse is essentially the same as a simple whiteboard. 99% of the time when you're actually using Muse, you don't see many components available for direct interaction, just as if you were facing a real whiteboard. On Muse, the most basic concept is "Card," which can be a text, an image, a GIF, a web link, or even a video. If you paste a link to a tweet with an image, Muse automatically recognizes the content of the image and organizes it in the whiteboard. Muse for Mac is designed from the same principles as Muse for iPad, while taking advantage of more screen real estate. macOS serves as a portal for organizing information: drag and drop various content from your browser directly into Muse to save and simply organize it. With the Muse browser plugin it's also quicker to batch-organize web pages into the Muse board.

Muse for iPad: relaxed thinking, annotating, and brainstorming 

On Ipad, you can do more relaxed thinking and creative input. Use Apple Pencil writing to complement text input with an infinite sense of creativity. You can write anywhere-on canvas, on text, on images, on PDFs. You can underline, circle, and highlight any content. Muse also provides a powerful toolkit to make it easy for users to draw their ideas. 

In general, both the macOS and iPadOS versions of the Muse App take advantage of the platform's native features, and this makes the two platforms even more inseparable. Sophisticated interactions such as organizing the whiteboard and drawing ideas are more suitable to be done on IpadOS. On the contrary, for organizing materials, pasting pictures, videos, GIFs and other element files, the macOS version application with a complete desktop file management system provides a smooth experience. When you get used to the interactions on the two platforms, you will enjoy it by using them in different scenarios. 

The idea of ‘designing for each device independently’ has been a consistent part of Muse's design and development, and ultimately, Muse's iPadOS / macOS apps are two complementary sets of tools: the mouse/keyboard/trackpad for the more complex upfront storage, and the touchscreen/Apple Pencil for the more subtle later adjustments and sophisticated idea input. For each stage of use, the Muse development team has made deep thinking, which is reflected in the app's feature selection.