---
title: "Hardware and software, designed together"
author: Dan Birman
url: https://dbirman.com/backbone
updated: 2026-11-09
summary: "I led design at Backbone across the controller, the app, and the brand, and sat on the executive team."
---

# Hardware and software, designed together

Head of Design · 3 min

I led design at Backbone across the controller, the app, and the brand, and sat on the executive team. Backbone turns a phone into a game console, and the controller only works as well as the app behind it, so the Backbone button and the screen it opens were designed as one thing. My team designed the controller and its packaging, the app, and a brand identity we built with an agency, and the Backbone One launched in October 2020.

Role
:   Head of Design, executive team

Team
:   Joined as one of the first employees, when there were fewer than five of us. By the time I left: 20+ in the US, plus mechanical engineering in Japan

Timeline
:   2019 to 2022

Scope
:   Industrial design, packaging, app, brand

## Clips you can share

One project: making it easy to share a great moment from a phone game. Casual players had no good way to make a clip on their phone without expensive capture hardware and editing software, and the hardest part was finding the moment worth sharing. We set three principles: automatic where possible, equally easy for console players and newcomers, and fast before custom. The first versions were touch-first. Each round moved more of the work onto the controller, with button hints along the bottom of the screen, a pattern people recognized and understood.

[Image: Naming a clip, with every action on a controller button]

[Image: Captures: every clip, recording and screenshot in one place]

[Image: The app on a phone in a Backbone One]

## Try it

A small version of the Backbone game library. Use the arrow keys, or plug in a controller.

[Interactive demo. Switch to the human view to try it.]

Made-up games. A reconstruction, not Backbone’s code.

The short version. [Ruli](https://dbirman.com/ruli) is the case study I go deep on; for this one, [ask me](mailto:hi@dbirman.com?subject=Hardware%20and%20software,%20designed%20together).