Project Brief
Evaluating the interface and functioning of an application and proposing a redesign concept by introducing or redesigning microinteractions for enhanced experience.
The following was a classroom project which was was carried out in the month of August 2020.
The duration of the course was one month.
Process Overview
01
02
03
04
Discover
Define
Design
Develop
- Competitor analysis
- User study
- Lean UX canvas
- User Personas
- Insights
- Key Problems
- Problem Statement
- Wire-frames
- Style guide
- Complete redesigned
screen mock ups
Behance Mobile Application
The Behance Network is a creative platform that allows talented people to showcase their work to a massive audience. Creative careers suffer from inefficiency, disorganization, and a lack of attribution for their work. Behance was a series of experiments to solve this problem. It’s published millions of projects since its launch in 2006, and it remains the go-to place to showcase your work.
Why Redesign the Behance Application?
Behance is one of the most growing platforms for showcasing your work or projects. It is also used as an source of portfolio for various students and designers. Behance website offers a lot more of opportunities and features, which the Behance Application lacks at.
Hence, redesigning the Behance Application in order to make it accessible for any user to showcase and interact with stakeholders, other designers and artists at a finger tip through their mobiles.
Discover
Competitors Analysis
Dribbble, Linkedln, Art Station, Indiefolio are the biggest direct competitors to Behance.
Instagram is the biggest indirect competitor to Behance.
Competitive Analysis helped in understanding the working and visual design of the competitors and analyse the data in order to redesign the application in a way which makes it stand out by enhancing the experience by deigning it effectively.
User Study
A questionnaire was sent out to the regular users of Behance in order to understand their views and help in identifying the problems better. There were 30 users who filled the form and mentioned the challenges they face with the application.
Behance is used for viewing projects the most in order to find design inspiration for their own work. Followed by uploading projects, but to edit minor mistakes. The users find uploading project cumbersome and difficult on the app.
The application lacks in providing opportunities like jobs and connecting with people because of the features not made available to the users on the phone, they are available on the browser.
The application has limited features available making it difficult for the user to navigate some features and they end up taking a lot of time using the application without any fruitful outcome.
Lean UX Canvas
Lean UX helped in understanding the application from a business point of view too. It helped in finding ways to achieve our goal. The entire process helped in exploring and thinking about the various perspectives and assumptions that could be tested with the users, note their feedback and re-iterate from there. The entire process helped in thinking all the perspectives keeping the users and business in mind.
Define
Persona
Behance application is used most for viewing projects (getting inspiration in designer's language) and next is for uploading projects.
The application lacks in providing opportunities like jobs and connecting with people because of the features not made available to the users on the phone, they are available on the browser.
Features like jobs, tags, beta group and conferences are some of them which they aren't well aware of. Navigation on the application is bad as the processes aren't very clear on the application making it difficult for the user to navigate in the application.
Insights
The tags on some projects are unknown. Users don't know what it means. And there is no information regarding the same.
Appreciations and views of the project are not shown.
Only one navigation bar, there is no hamburger menu, which makes the user go through the entire application for some buttons.
The user gets confused with that icon, understanding it has a help button then the information icon
While communicating and connecting with people, the user is unaware with the basic of interactions like delivered, messaged seen, etc
There is no instructions or guide while creating projects.
The icons there, aren't very familiar leaving the users unaware about what they are doing. Some features what the website offers isn't available here.
There is only button for notifications, which makes it compulsory for the user to check the notifications in the same place. There is no categories of notification either, which confuses the user when notification arrives.
The search facility on the application is the worse of all.
There is filter for search which has to be changed according to
our preferences every time we search. They aren't even displayed up,
it's something that the user has to find and then filter accordingly.
Key Problems
Inconvenient
Navigation
Filter
Parameters
Search is inefficient
Untimely notifications
Editing is
not effective
Difficulty in
networking
Missing
Features
Problem Statement
To redesign the application in order to bridge the gap between the website and the application and add in interactions and making it easy for the users to engage, use and navigate through the application.
Design
Wire-framing
Style Guide
Color Palette
#FFFFFF
Used in background
color and icons.
#565656
Used in the text of the dark theme.
#000000
Used in the text, dark theme and icons.
#0057FF
Used for most of the
icons & buttons.
Used in the logo also.
Typography
Iconography
Develop
Introducing Onboarding
An introduction to Behance through onboarding and giving the user to choose their choice of interests to view their favorable projects has been introduced.
If a new user, the application also gives a guide about the features in the application
New Features and Interactions
The new entire home page gives a chance to the user on either viewing two or four screens in a glance.
There is a top navigation bar has hamburger menu and a space for direct messages and messages for community. In the existing design of the application notifications and message are together which confuses the users.
Hamburger menu is all new in Behance which includes features like Conference, Live, Job opportunities, your dashboard and activity analytics, Help and FAQ
if ever in doubt.
Enhancing the experience of uploading a project
The user can upload or edit their project at any time without any difficulties.
Giving a process numbering on the top will make it easier for the user to understand and make changes at any step by going back and not having to discard the changes.
Differeniating communication and notifications
In the notifications section there has been a bifurcation for notifications related your project and notifications related to profile.
Adding a search icon helps the users search for a particular notification at any point of their time.
Introducing Moodboards & Insights on the app
Introducing moodbaords, saved projects and dashboard which helps the user look at the projects they have saved or liked and get an
analytics about their profile in a glance.
You can now save any page of project under moodboard (which is private to you) and get the colors used on that very board just below.
Final Note
The analysis and redesign was done for the purpose of a classroom project. Behance is a creative platform that allows people to showcase their work to a massive audience. Behance is often used on desktop and less on mobile application and one of the reasons was the absence of the features on the mobile application. The target audience chosen for the project was mainly students and certain questions and tasks were performed by the users to understand the pain points. This project helped in better understanding of how the other competitors are playing a role, what the users are liking in the following domain, what the users want and why is the application difficult for them to user. The analysis done helped in understanding that there was a gap between the website and application and that it should be built in order to make it easier for the user to use and navigate through it.
Hence the proposed redesign is a recommendation in order to bridge the gap between the website and application. This entire project helped in understanding the importance of interactions and how they help in engaging the users.