Day 13 of 100: Direct Messaging ( Facebook post-screen redesign )

Bonus: A London airport travelator sign retouch.

Day 13 UI Challenge: Design a Direct Messaging UI of your choice and I chose to design a Facebook post UI.

I know you will ask, “what is the essence of today’s design if I just chose to redesign a Facebook post page UI?”.

Well, I was looking for a messaging screen to design and lots of ideas came like:

• Gmail inbox UI redesign
• Whatsapp chat screen
• Ecommerce customer support live chat screen
• Google hangout chat screen
• the out-of-favour 2Go chat application screen
• a conversational UI and so many others

But something interesting happened.

Image copyright Emeka Afigbo

While I was thinking about the idea for this challenge ( took me almost a day ), I was tagged on one of my big Ogas’ Facebook post by a designer friend,

Blaine Billingsley

who challenged me to have a take on a London Airport’s travelator sign which is somewhat confusing for debutant international travelers.

Post by Ex-manager Emeka about this

You may think that this is no issue and that common sense should tell us it’s for us to ‘face-front’ and not risk falling off the travelator’s conveyor belt by turning around. But sincerely, I was confused the first time I saw the picture and had to really figure out what was going on. Also, I have read about other people’s not so good experiences with the same sign.

Does that sign mean that if I am traveling up-North to a certain country that I should keep a straight face? Or face backwards if I am heading South or do a sharp right turn to the East?. Even though most local travelers will easily relate that sign to ‘not falling off the conveyor belt’ but how about first time travelers? Will they easily think like the locals? Well…I bet you, thoughts like this might happen.

How about kids? Won’t they immediately fall victim by turning back to ask “Mum, please which direction are we to face? The sign says we should face direction of travel?” Might sound funny right? but yes, this is more than possible.

Does that sign actually need a redesign?

Not exactly!

Common sense tells us that “Face direction of travel” means that you should just relax and sit or stand comfortably and allow whatever is that is conveying you ( Bus, car, uber, airplane, train etc ) take you in that direction you are facing. Secondly, that sitting against the direction of a moving plane can cause motion sickness/dizzyness and it’s even dangerous because you can fall/trip off or turn and spin since you will be battling against the forward direction of motion.

So you can read here for some reasons why you should always sit facing the direction of motion.

So design-wise, I thought of different options on how this can be redesigned

but concluded that it only needs a better icon than the “info” icon used.

So I made this quick one;

And not to forget that I was told to make a direct messaging UI screen, I designed the Facebook post UI screen with the quick travelator new sign.

See the Facebook post screen design I made below

My Facebook post screen redesign

Please if you enjoyed this article, I would love you to recommend it so that it will be visible for others to read. Thanks for your awesome time.

Incase you missed the last two days:

Day 12 of 100: Crafting a minimal e-commerce product page

Day 11 of 100: A Flash Message(Error/Success) UI