Refining the User Experience for Monday Morning
Monday Morning is the second-largest student media body in India. The app built for serving articles to the student user base had almost all the features the website provided but in a form that made interacting with them frustrating rather than a leisurely natural experience. This project involved rebuilding the app right from the scratch, rethinking every little part of the experience.
This app is live and can be found here.
The Challenge
With witty comics, student polls and discussion forums under its belt, Monday Morning is responsible for a lot more than serving the news to their audience. Content, however available in the app, was hidden within tabs and sub-menus making them inaccessible to a normal end-user. The complicated user experience needed to be sorted out and streamlined to make it feel more natural and accessible to the end-user. The focus had to be on relevant and important information for the average end-user.
Poll Analysis
Specially designed skip logic surveys were designed to identify common complaints of the masses as well as individualistic complaints of the user under one database. Based on the response of a sizable audience, the following results were obtained:
Poor Reach
The app has been around for quite a long time now, however, the number of readers accessing the content through the app was poor.
It was found that the majority of people never felt that they needed an app for Monday Morning since it flaunts a mobile website which is more than sufficient for reading articles, which in fact, was found to be the major activity participants who used the app did. Even though the app handles that pretty well, users don’t find that a very compelling reason to move to the app since the website also handles that pretty well.
Finding Relevant information was difficult
It was found that the user interface was one of the features the users were most apprehensive about. A large chunk of the participants also believed that the app was cluttered, finding relevant information was troublesome and that navigation within the app was difficult.
Basic Features are rarely used
Except for reading and commenting on articles the app offers a multitude of features. However, most of these, however interactive, aren’t used by the users. Secondary features never make it to the spotlight because of their poor placement within the interface of the app.
Deeper Understanding
Especially arranged user interviews and practical testing of usability of the app with multiple test subjects helped understand the reason for the failure of the current user interface to provide a friendly and easy to understand way of interaction.
UI Issues
Search
The search feature within the app was found to be particularly useless. The results weren’t multi-faceted and most of the time the required article would show up after a couple of completely irrelevant results. The search couldn’t be used as a primary navigation system and ended up being a pretty non-functional add on.
Brainstroming and New Features
By the outcome of the research, it was decided that the entire layout of the app had to be revised, a complete restructuring of all the data available to the user combined with the inclusion of new features taking full advantage of the potential of the platform and its mass reach and effectiveness. Analysing the user inputs and analytics, it was decided that three features would be on the forefront of the new and updated Monday Morning app.
Featured and This Week
Two separate sections under the previous version, they were combined to a single entity making it the most important feature of the app. Majority of the user base analysed suggest that they use the app for reading the week’s news and updates. In such a scenario, ‘Featured’ being the very foundation of the experience makes complete sense.
Forum
A newly introduced app-only feature, Forum has the potential to attract a huge chunk of the targeted audience to the app ecosystem making it way more interactive and useful than the previous version. An uncensored, freely available, local forum for a 5000-pupil strong NITR junta would serve as a go-to place for various issues and discussions related or unrelated to NIT. Keeping ‘Forum’ as a major feature within the app would thus give the much-required push to improve the app’s reach to a wider audience.
Buzz
This section comprises of interactive features of the app like ask a question, student pulse etc. More participation through the app would increase the validity of the poll results and thereby improve the overall quality of the organisation as a whole. Ask-a-question being put at such a high prominence will bring the entire organisation closer to its user base.
Wireframes and Mockups
Multiple iterations were created before the final design was decided. The wireframes and mockups above were a part of the process that lead to the resulting UI.
Decluttering
The clutter of the landing page and the subsequent pages had to be minimised and the app had to be streamlined to keep the most important features on the forefront of the experience.
- The landing page consists only of the featured articles slider giving it a neat and composed look, keeping the most relevant stuff on top.
- The hamburger button was retained but only for handling secondary features.
- The panel to the right contains a slider containing ‘Forum’, ’Buzz’ and ‘Career’ displaying only the most relevant information to the end user.
- Categories is pushed back into the hamburger menu and its entire design is re-imagined for quick navigation and clarity.
- Fab was added in the article view to jump to comments in the bottom of the page.
- User Interface was completely re-imagined to portray a much more professional feel.
Fixing Search
Search was developed to be an integral part of the entire app experience. It could now handle multi-faceted search queries and fetch in results from the entire database of the app. It has been implemented as a primary navigation feature bringing in results from diverse sections like upcoming events, forum, buzz, career and team profiles. It has been deeply integrated into the app facilitating it to deliver its purpose.
Visual Design
The interface was supposed to showcase a modern yet professional look. A dual tone color scheme was chosen to keep the overall association of the app with print media yet follow the modern minimalist design principle. Rounded rectangles were majorly used to blend in with modern phones with the bezel-less design aesthetic. Smooth animations and minimalist design with appropriate use of shadows and highlights ensured a beautiful, clean and easy to use interface.
Summing Up
The Monday Morning app overhaul was a long overdue project. The previous version, even while serving its purpose, was just an app version of the mobile website. Only more tightly packed and inflexible. The revamped app now sports a much more interactive UI and a slew of new features designed to grab the user’s attention within no time. The new app, while being in touch with its roots provides an improved and updated experience to become an app of real use and productivity for the end user.
