The idea
This project was just something I did in my spare time. The idea was to find a popular app and give it a redesign. The app I chose to redesign was the BBC News app on iOS. The main reason for this is because it’s an app I use every day. My proposed design aims to improve the look of the application, whilst also making some functional changes to the app.
I had to approach the user research differently to figure out the problems with the current design. Luckily the app store has plenty of review for the app by user voicing their feedback.
Currently, the app has a 3-star rating, which is ok but can definitely be improved. An overwhelming number of the negative reviews are down to the removal of the ‘carousel’ view, which allowed users to quickly swipe between topics.
“it was a really easy way to get an overview of the top stories in all the topics I’m interested in.”
I too, like many other users wanted there to be a quicker way to navigate between topics. But I also wanted some other features implemented. One feature I feel is important is the ability to save articles to read for later. There have been many occasions where there is an article or several articles that I would like to read but haven’t got the time to do so and I think there are many users in the same position.
Obviously, actual user interviews and testing would be the only way to get the best understanding of how to design the app, but as a regular user of the app, I had my own opinions on how the app could be best improved.
I too, like many other users wanted there to be a quicker way to navigate between topics. But I also wanted some other features implemented. One feature I feel is important is the ability to save articles to read for later. There have been many occasions where there is an article or several articles that I would like to read but haven’t got the time to do so and I think there are many users in the same position.
Another feature I’ve always wanted was the ability to customise the reading experience. So, this includes being able to change the text size but also the background colour, so why not include a dark mode? Any time I use an app that has a dark mode, I enable it straight away and I’ve noticed that more and more apps, particularly news apps or app that involve a lot of reading are including dark modes.
