Brian KingerySoftware Engineer |
Creative Product & Systems Leader

AppStudio

Company
Domo
My contribution
  • Layout architecture
  • Editor interactions
  • Mobile composition

The challenge

More freedom. Fewer coordinates.

App Studio had an ambitious vision: let people turn their data into applications. The old dashboard layout model had other ideas. Absolute positioning made composition rigid, and creators had little say in how it looked of behaved.

I proposed a layout editing engine built on CSS grids. Placement, nesting, rearrangement, and resizing all had to work together.

Domo App Studio with theme controls beside an application of charts, filters, and page navigation.

The interaction

One edge. More than one neighbor.

A resize is rarely just one cell’s business. Any shared edge can connect cells of different sizes and spans, across rows or columns. I worked through egde cases allowing for the smallest affected group, and for the whole row. Creators could make a local adjustment or reshape the row, while every connected neighbor stayed aligned.

The mobile model

A smaller screen. Not a lesser layout.

Mobile could be its own composition, not just a stack generated from desktop. Creators could reorder, resize, or hide content for a phone.

That freedom had to survive the next edit. An item inserted on desktop needed to land relative to its chosen neighbor on mobile, without undoing the creator’s custom order.

“He has the talents, skills, mentorship and knowledge that contributes greatly to this project as well as Domo’s success.”
Domo Trophy AwardJune 2023 · App Studio

The result

A solid foundation.

I separated layout from content in a declarative model, then led the editor implementation, migration, and release.

Existing dashboards had a path forward without being rebuilt. Creators gained more control over composition, while the team replaced fragile coordinate math with a shared, browser-native foundation. The same declarative model also supported AI-generated dashboards.

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