Reddit as been around for a long time, and a lot of user have stuck with it since its early days. However, if you ask a new user for their thoughts, chances are that they’ll mention the cluttered UI and the confusing subreddit system. Even amongst the heavy Reddit community, the UI and some other poorly optimized features have become an inside joke of sorts.
Project scope
Audit Reddit android app
Redesign 3 screens
Constraints
The time frame to complete this project was two weeks
Insights gathered through a heuristic evaluation instead of user research
This case study was completed on April of 2023. Having accumulated a lot of experience since then, I’ll will be leaving a few comments throughout this case study briefly giving my opinion when looking back.
1. The problem
Non-user centered design
The main problem seems to be that Reddit is designing its app around how they want users to behave instead of designing the app around how the users actually behave. Therefore, I concluded through a heuristic evaluation that Reddit users need a more intuitive and decluttered interface, because these shortcomings serve as a barrier of entry for new users and as friction to the heavy users’ experience.
2. Heuristic evaluation
Pin-pointing pain-points
The main problem seems to be that Reddit is designing its app around how they want users to behave instead of designing the app around how the users actually behave. Therefore, I concluded through a heuristic evaluation that Reddit users need a more intuitive and decluttered interface, because these shortcomings serve as a barrier of entry for new users and as friction to the heavy users’ experience.
Usability heuristic broken:
Flexibility and efficiency of use
The header bar doesn’t allow the user to filter the homepage or access r/All directly. It doesn’t provide direct access to the navigation categories that users usually guide themselves with.
Usability heuristic broken:
Aesthetic and minimalist design
The post header takes too much attention away from the post. The subreddit and username of the poster can be relevant information to the user, but it is not more relevant than the post itself and therefore, aside from the title, it shouldn’t be at the top of the visual hierarchy.
Usability heuristic broken:
Aesthetic and minimalist design
The post’s information should only be there to remind the user of what the comment section is referring to. When the user clicks on the comment section button, they most likely have already seen the post and are only interested in seeing the comments. This, combined with the advertisement, makes it so the user has to scroll an entire screen before being able to see the comment section.
Usability heuristic broken:
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Too many dividers used. Screen feels cluttered and claustrophobic. The usual solution to this is to separate with space rather than lines.
Usability heuristic broken:
Flexibility and efficiency of use
There’s no text based content in the Discover page when a lot of Reddit’s content is purely text based. It could be stories, questions, rants, among others. By not being able for users to discover these posts, Reddit is pretty much cutting in half the amount of discoverable content.
Usability heuristic broken:
Aesthetic and minimalist design
The number of upvotes is not high enough in the visual hierarchy. The number of upvotes is the metric by which most users guide themselves on Reddit. It is both a measure of reliability of information and popularity. Therefore, it is often one of the first pieces of information that a user will look at, sometimes being even used to subconsciously decide if the user will want to see the post or not.
3. Ideation
Designing Reddit for Redditors
I wanted the app to have a rounded, flat design. Reddit has a lot of information constantly jumping at the user, and most times hiding that information isn’t an option. So in order to make the consumption of that information less intimidating, I thought it appropriate to use a friendly design with space to breathe.
I started out with some sketches and made some notes on how to address the pain-points of the current Reddit app. Normally, I would have drawn them better, but since this was a solo project, I didn’t feel it was valuable to do so since no one else would use them as reference.
Once I had the general direction I wanted to follow, I started working on the foundational elements of the design: The atoms. This included color, typography, and corner radii.
#4B3A5B
#D4724E
#40B1B3
#222222
#797B7D
#E9EBED
In regards to color, I decided to go with a muted purple to contrast with the neutral colors used in the rest of the app. It should give off a sense of creativity and fun without taking too much attention away from the posts. Using this hue as a reference point, I played around with colors and decided on a split complementary color scheme for the accent colors.
As for the corner radius, I went with 30px for most elements with the exception of very large elements, which had a 60px radius.
4. Iconography
Making a new icon set
Between the 3 screens I chose to redesign, I found 16 distinct icons that were used. Since this was a relatively small amount, I decided to redesign them from scratch to match the rest of the redesign’s visually identity.
5. Results
A new browsing experience
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