What causes an app to die?
I look at a product like Myspace that overhauled itself with a bold and unconventional, beautiful new redesign. I was delighted by new UI conventions like a side scrolling profile. I think in Myspace’s case, Facebook was it’s demise. But I also wonder how good of a strategy it is pushing the envelope on an app that’s in trouble. Sometimes I think we need to take risks, other times maybe we just need to get back to basics.
The existing Stumbleupon app was out of date and visually inconsistent. The UX was also poor, users weren’t using the app. The main page of the app where users ‘stumble’ upon new websites was difficult to understand, and displayed content in a haphazard way (half the time being unreadable). The app’s content on the main page was largely user generated and needed a better designed container. There were two other designers on the team, one was working on the desktop version of the app and the other worked on marketing. Because the mobile app was in the state it was, they were unable to produce designs with coherent branding and visual language. So I met with the product manager on the team to pick their brain on strategy, but they were not sure what they wanted and needed to see a wide variety of options in a short amount of time.
I took on the strategy and created upwards of 10 variations per screen at the beginning of the project until the visual language began to take shape. At that point, I directed the other designers in implementing the new styles across the rest of the product. The new style was familiar, and borrowed conventions from Google’s Material design. The app had a wide audience with a decent age range about 14-35. So I wanted a clean design that didn’t reinvent the wheel. In my view, Stumbleupon needed to keep it’s existing user base and be easily accessible to new users of a wide audience. I adjusted the main screen to function better, making it clear where to add something to your ‘stumbles’. I also devised a way to accommodate a variety of content that would still look good. I worked closely with a mobile developer to understand their framework and what was possible in the current timeline. I increased the visibility of sharing and following UI, and gave balanced hierarchy to pertinent social meta data over other information on the main screen and across content feeds. I established a visual language that matched the new logo recently designed by an outside brand agency, and helped to carry it across the rest of the product. The redesign was very successful, seeing a one and a half star review go up to five in a matter of weeks, and winning the 2015 People’s Voice Webby Award.
