Unified Fast Cards
Unified Fast Cards
Unified
Project Summary
Project Summary
Overview
Role: Lead UX Designer (with supporting UX designer Rakesh)
Ownership: Strategy, structure, OEM interaction, Design systems, handoffs
Collaboration:
One supporting UX designer + DS team + Engineering team + PMs & designers from all Glance verticals (News, Sports, Entertainment, Gaming, Shopping, Central Design team, Marketing Team and QA)
Cross-team Impact:
Worked across EUs to align on a common Fast Card standardisation
Defined UX foundations compatible with different content formats (news summary, video previews, game launches, product listings)
Mentored designers contributing to visual layers
About Glace:
Glance is an AI-powered lock-screen discovery platform used across millions of Android devices that delivers personalized entertainment, sports, news, and shopping experiences directly on Android devices without opening any apps. A large part of this experience runs on “fast cards” which is small, lightweight content modules that show movies, live scores, shopping deals, games, news and more.
Over time, each vertical built its own version of Landing page. This created fragmentation, inconsistent behavior, and high design & engineering overhead.
To solve this at scale, I led the creation of the Unified Fast Card System a modular, cross-vertical design framework that became the single source of truth for all cards on Glance.
About the project
UFC (Unified Fast Cards) is a reimagination of Glance’s fast card experience, integrating diverse content verticals News, Games, Videos, and Shop into a seamless, premium, and highly engaging user interface.
Multiple legacy content formats = inconsistent UX
Users confused by jumping layouts → drop in engagement
Outcome? A 1.5x content consumption, session depth, and engagement across verticals, while laying down a unified template infrastructure for all future content formats.
Problem Space
Challenge:
Glance had four major content EUs which are News, Games, Videos, and Shop but users primarily discovered only News.
Other high-value verticals remained hidden due to siloed layouts and OEM constraints (especially in tab-less devices).Who: Android users on Glance lockscreen from OEMs like Xiaomi, Realme, Samsung, Poco, Vivo, Moto and Oppo.
Monetization Barriers
Fragmentation = lost monetization opportunities. Because every vertical used different card formats, Glance couldn’t consistently show:
Sponsored placements (Advertisement)
Commerce CTAs
Cross-Region (EU) Visibility & Scalability Problems
OEM behavior differed across regions (India, Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, EU).
Since card formats weren’t unified, Glance couldn’t scale experiences quickly across:Xiaomi vs Realme vs Samsung
Different web-view versions & SDK
Weak User Signal Collection
Every vertical captured signals differently.
User interest categories
Language preference
Why Now: With growing inventory across verticals and expanding revenue goals, there was a need to unify the card system experience while driving deeper engagement.
Unified Fast Card Solves real user problems
Provides a consistent UI/UX for users across products.
Ensures a clear visual hierarchy for key elements heading, publisher, author, time published, reading duration, etc.
Enables standardized capabilities such as bookmarking, feedback, bot integration, content personalization (see more/less, follow topics, etc.).
From an ads perspective, it allows us to design more effective ad templates where ads and content coexist seamlessly.
Discovery & Research
Methods: Content analysis, OEM-specific audits, internal benchmarking, analytics review
Younger Audiences Prefer Varied Tonality: Young people are interested in both serious and lighthearted content. While they consume serious topics like health and world news, they are equally drawn to clickbait topics in entertainment, travel, and beauty.
Older Audiences Lean Towards Serious Content: Older individuals tend to prefer more serious content, but there is also a significant segment attracted to clickbait topics, particularly in entertainment and travel.
Gender-Specific Interests
Ideation & Exploration
Multi-card layout compositions, swipe gestures, ad blend variants.
Trade-offs & balancing designed a system where content and monetization (ads)
Designing card shells that work for text, video, game, and commerce in a single scalable framework
Final Design
Card System Design:
Unified Fast Card template supports:
Article cards with summaries
Video cards with preview
Game cards with interactive launch mechanics
Shop cards with embedded product links
User Preference signal via Topic, Language, Gender and Age
Unified Fast Cards
Unified Fast Cards
Additional Features:
Swiping up/down toggles tab bar
Content hierarchy rules: visible card, partial fade to next
Persistent dark mode sync
Dynamic visual & data ingestion based on FC source (SHP, PHP, Games, Roposo)
Impact & Result
Engagement up
Reduced bounce on first card
Visibilities across EUs
Unified design = reduced design maintenance effort
Unified Fast Cards
Unified
Project Summary
Overview
UFC (Unified Fast Cards) is a reimagination of Glance’s fast card experience, integrating diverse content verticals News, Games, Videos, and Shop into a seamless, premium, and highly engaging user interface.
Multiple legacy content formats = inconsistent UX
Users confused by jumping layouts → drop in engagement
Outcome
A 1.5x content consumption, session depth, and engagement across verticals, while laying down a unified template infrastructure for all future content formats.
About the project
UFC (Unified Fast Cards) is a reimagination of Glance’s fast card experience, integrating diverse content verticals News, Games, Videos, and Shop into a seamless, premium, and highly engaging user interface.
Multiple legacy content formats = inconsistent UX
Users confused by jumping layouts → drop in engagement
Outcome
A 1.5x content consumption, session depth, and engagement across verticals, while laying down a unified template infrastructure for all future content formats.
Problem Space
Challenge:
Glance had four major content EUs which are News, Games, Videos, and Shop but users primarily discovered only News.
Other high-value verticals remained hidden due to siloed layouts and OEM constraints (especially in tab-less devices).Who: Android users on Glance lockscreen from OEMs like Xiaomi, Realme, Samsung, Poco, Vivo, Moto and Oppo.
Monetization Barriers
Fragmentation = lost monetization opportunities. Because every vertical used different card formats, Glance couldn’t consistently show:
Sponsored placements (Advertisement)
Commerce CTAs
Cross-Region (EU) Visibility & Scalability Problems
OEM behavior differed across regions (India, Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, EU).
Since card formats weren’t unified, Glance couldn’t scale experiences quickly across:Xiaomi vs Realme vs Samsung
Different web-view versions & SDK
Weak User Signal Collection
Every vertical captured signals differently.
User interest categories
Language preference
Why Now: With growing inventory across verticals and expanding revenue goals, there was a need to unify the card system experience while driving deeper engagement.
Unified Fast Card Solves real user problems
Provides a consistent UI/UX for users across products.
Ensures a clear visual hierarchy for key elements heading, publisher, author, time published, reading duration, etc.
Enables standardized capabilities such as bookmarking, feedback, bot integration, content personalization (see more/less, follow topics, etc.).
From an ads perspective, it allows us to design more effective ad templates where ads and content coexist seamlessly.
Discovery & Research
Methods: Content analysis, OEM-specific audits, internal benchmarking, analytics review
Younger Audiences Prefer Varied Tonality: Young people are interested in both serious and lighthearted content. While they consume serious topics like health and world news, they are equally drawn to clickbait topics in entertainment, travel, and beauty.
Older Audiences Lean Towards Serious Content: Older individuals tend to prefer more serious content, but there is also a significant segment attracted to clickbait topics, particularly in entertainment and travel.
Gender-Specific Interests
Ideation & Exploration
Multi-card layout compositions, swipe gestures, ad blend variants.
Trade-offs & balancing designed a system where content and monetization (ads)
Designing card shells that work for text, video, game, and commerce in a single scalable framework
Final Design
Card System Design:
Unified Fast Card template supports:
Article cards with summaries
Video cards with preview
Game cards with interactive launch mechanics
Shop cards with embedded product links
User Preference signal via Topic, Language, Gender and Age
Unified Fast Cards
Additional Features:
Swiping up/down toggles tab bar
Content hierarchy rules: visible card, partial fade to next
Persistent dark mode sync
Dynamic visual & data ingestion based on FC source (SHP, PHP, Games, Roposo)
Impact & Result
Engagement up
Reduced bounce on first card
Visibilities across EUs
Unified design = reduced design maintenance effort
Unified Fast Cards
Unified
Project Summary
Overview
Role: Lead UX Designer (with supporting UX designer Rakesh)
Ownership: Strategy, structure, OEM interaction, Design systems, handoffs
Collaboration:
One supporting UX designer + DS team + Engineering team + PMs & designers from all Glance verticals (News, Sports, Entertainment, Gaming, Shopping, Central Design team, Marketing Team and QA)
Cross-team Impact:
Worked across EUs to align on a common Fast Card standardisation
Defined UX foundations compatible with different content formats (news summary, video previews, game launches, product listings)
Mentored designers contributing to visual layers
About Glace:
Glance is an AI-powered lock-screen discovery platform used across millions of Android devices that delivers personalized entertainment, sports, news, and shopping experiences directly on Android devices without opening any apps. A large part of this experience runs on “fast cards” which is small, lightweight content modules that show movies, live scores, shopping deals, games, news and more.
Over time, each vertical built its own version of Landing page. This created fragmentation, inconsistent behavior, and high design & engineering overhead.
To solve this at scale, I led the creation of the Unified Fast Card System a modular, cross-vertical design framework that became the single source of truth for all cards on Glance.
About the project
UFC (Unified Fast Cards) is a reimagination of Glance’s fast card experience, integrating diverse content verticals News, Games, Videos, and Shop into a seamless, premium, and highly engaging user interface.
Multiple legacy content formats = inconsistent UX
Users confused by jumping layouts → drop in engagement
Outcome? A 1.5x content consumption, session depth, and engagement across verticals, while laying down a unified template infrastructure for all future content formats.
Problem Space
Challenge:
Glance had four major content EUs which are News, Games, Videos, and Shop but users primarily discovered only News.
Other high-value verticals remained hidden due to siloed layouts and OEM constraints (especially in tab-less devices).Who: Android users on Glance lockscreen from OEMs like Xiaomi, Realme, Samsung, Poco, Vivo, Moto and Oppo.
Monetization Barriers
Fragmentation = lost monetization opportunities. Because every vertical used different card formats, Glance couldn’t consistently show:
Sponsored placements (Advertisement)
Commerce CTAs
Cross-Region (EU) Visibility & Scalability Problems
OEM behavior differed across regions (India, Indonesia, Brazil, Japan, EU).
Since card formats weren’t unified, Glance couldn’t scale experiences quickly across:Xiaomi vs Realme vs Samsung
Different web-view versions & SDK
Weak User Signal Collection
Every vertical captured signals differently.
User interest categories
Language preference
Why Now: With growing inventory across verticals and expanding revenue goals, there was a need to unify the card system experience while driving deeper engagement.
Unified Fast Card Solves real user problems
Provides a consistent UI/UX for users across products.
Ensures a clear visual hierarchy for key elements heading, publisher, author, time published, reading duration, etc.
Enables standardized capabilities such as bookmarking, feedback, bot integration, content personalization (see more/less, follow topics, etc.).
From an ads perspective, it allows us to design more effective ad templates where ads and content coexist seamlessly.
Discovery & Research
Methods: Content analysis, OEM-specific audits, internal benchmarking, analytics review
Younger Audiences Prefer Varied Tonality: Young people are interested in both serious and lighthearted content. While they consume serious topics like health and world news, they are equally drawn to clickbait topics in entertainment, travel, and beauty.
Older Audiences Lean Towards Serious Content: Older individuals tend to prefer more serious content, but there is also a significant segment attracted to clickbait topics, particularly in entertainment and travel.
Gender-Specific Interests
Ideation & Exploration
Multi-card layout compositions, swipe gestures, ad blend variants.
Trade-offs & balancing designed a system where content and monetization (ads)
Designing card shells that work for text, video, game, and commerce in a single scalable framework
Final Design
Card System Design:
Unified Fast Card template supports:
Article cards with summaries
Video cards with preview
Game cards with interactive launch mechanics
Shop cards with embedded product links
User Preference signal via Topic, Language, Gender and Age
Unified Fast Cards
Additional Features:
Swiping up/down toggles tab bar
Content hierarchy rules: visible card, partial fade to next
Persistent dark mode sync
Dynamic visual & data ingestion based on FC source (SHP, PHP, Games, Roposo)
Impact & Result
Engagement up
Reduced bounce on first card
Visibilities across EUs
Unified design = reduced design maintenance effort