August 11, 2026 · Development

Where do loose pieces live?

A bottom tray, an open table, a side panel or sorting bins: four early layouts for the puzzle board.

Editorial pencil illustration of four piece-placement options — Editorial illustration based on early board layouts.

With a physical jigsaw, you can spread loose pieces across the table. A phone has much less room. On August 11, we drew four ways to store them, leaving out the visual styling so we could compare the space available for assembly.

A bottom tray kept pieces together and left the board open. Scattering them around the frame felt more like a table, but made them easier to lose from view. A side panel took up width on an already narrow screen. Separate bins would allow sorting, at the cost of more actions right from the start.

A drawing is not yet an answer

We chose the bottom tray for further testing and kept the scattered layout as a comparison for the prototype. The drawings showed how much room each element needed, but dragging pieces and moving the board had to be tried on a device.

Archived sheet with four schematic board layouts — Surviving early sheet: bottom tray, pieces around the board, side panel, and sorting bins.

These sheets remain in the archive. They show the options before styling: moving the loose pieces to a different location could change how the whole screen worked.

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