Express Draw
Express Draw is the specialized EDU-focused drawing editor of Express, a mass market graphic design web app. Express Draw is a simple, joyful tool for K-8 students to have fun expressing themselves.

In the 18 months from initial conversations to public launch, we established target user and vision, got buy-in from key stakeholders, narrowed on an MVP feature set, created detailed designs, and worked with engineering to bring them to life. The result is a fun tool that lets you do everything from scribble with cheese wiz to paint with the rainbow.
Delightful brushes
The core of any drawing experience is the brushes. In addition to designing the browsing UI, we worked with digital brush expert Kyle Webster to curate an exciting set and refined them with our engineers to make sure they felt good and performed well.
We made sure to include brushes that imitated art supplies, as well as decorative brushes that could create fun effects like grass and flowers.

We also brought over technology from Fresco to enable multicolor brushes, which allowed our young users to paint with 3D rainbows, pastel swirls, cheese wiz, and more.

Templates
We knew that our users could be stymied with "fear of the blank page", and that activity sheet templates would be a great help to get them started. Since templates were used throughout the Express ecosystem, we were able to match our UI pattern with the larger Express mixed media editor's.

For the drawing editor, we created a special set of templates that were automatically in "coloring book mode," which would make you automatically stay inside the lines no matter how haphazard your coloring marks were. This was a huge help when drawing with the trackpad or mouse.

Process notes
As lead designer for the Drawing and Painting team, I oversaw this project as well as Fresco from 2022-2023. In that time I worked with Megan Truong, who led designs for Express drawing editor. In August 2023 I went on maternity leave and the rest of our 5 person design team did an amazing job building on what Megan and I had established. Throughout the whole process, we worked closely with our PMs and engineers to get this shipped.
After launch, we conducted user research with our research partner Quynh Nguyen to validate and refine the designs. (What you see above is actually the second iteration of the brush panel, which was updated based on user feedback.) We continue to talk to users to understand their needs and determine what features to prioritize next.
As this is an MVP, we have plans and designs for much more. To hear more of the behind the scenes process, get in touch to schedule a chat.