UX Study Case: Redesigning Twitter for mobile
The Challenge
Choose the app I like and use a lot and how I can come up with an idea about how to improve it.
About why I choose Twitter
I have been a Twitter user since 2011, let’s say around 9 years. I have followed its changes for the application, but not all I can remember. I like Twitter because of the people in it and it’s simplicity.
Why it need redesign?
Because there are some parts that I think can be fixed through this redesign, in terms of personal experience and empathy for its user.
So, how did I come up with the idea?
First, I started to do some research to understand the problem of the current Twitter for the current users and to understand what feature I’m gonna redesign.
Twitter target audience
I did some research about the range of Twitter users by age group. This research was taken in January 2020. The thing that surprises me is that most of the Twitter user goes to age around 25–34 years old with a total of 29%. Followed up by user around 18–24 years old with a total of 24%.
So I surveyed 12 participants based on Twitter’s target audience, with the age around 18–34 years old to get a better understanding of who I’m designing for:
- How often do you use Twitter?
- What’s the main reason you use Twitter?
Survey Result #1: Twitter Usage
Survey Result #2: Purpose when using Twitter
Based on the surveys, the top 3 purposes when using Twitter are:
- Exploring tweets
- Read thread tweets
- Look for what’s trending
The persona of Twitter User
After we got a better understanding of the user we want to redesign for, it’s time to get to work.
Redesign #1: Home
Aside from every repetitive function which I mention in that picture, there were more major problems that needed to be redesigned.
Problem #1: Swiping experience
I also ask participants in the online survey I did before about their swiping experience at home. I remind them not to open their twitter before answering these questions. There are two main questions :
- Question #1: When you swipe from left to right, what happened?
Answer: Open sidebar menu - Question #2: When you swipe from right to left, what happened?
Answer: Open camera to post a pictured tweet
To my surprise, from all participants, 83,3% of them give a wrong answer for Question 2. In that 83,3%, there are 33,3% of them think that it open explore page. Normally, they think like that because explore is on the right of the home and they expect it to open the home page.
Problem #2: Unseen previous replies
When the user clicks the reply icon, they can’t also see the previous reply from other users.
To view the previous tweet while replying, you need to click the tweet and then click the reply. It needs more steps and needs to be fixed.
Redesign #2: Sidebar Menu
On this sidebar menu, there are 3 private items that the user can use. Either to bookmark a tweet, bookmark user and topics.
Problem #1: Rarely used functions
Based on my online surveys, there are 83% of the participants who rarely get back to their bookmarked tweets, even bookmarked people. That means people tend to not use those functions, and because the sidebar is full of that, it needs to be fixed.
Redesign #2: Explore
On Twitter, users can explore through trending hashtags or even anything that’s currently getting a lot of mention. Twitter algorithms allow the user to see other tweets from topics that they follow or from other user’s that they also follow. But here is the problem :
Problem: Unsatisfied related topics in explore
From all of the participants, the average satisfaction about the related topics in their explore is 3,1, which a bit low.
So, after explaining which part I’m gonna redesign on Twitter, let’s move right into the solution part.
Solution
First, I start to do sketching part of my idea to redesign Twitter. I do this to get a concrete context to visualize my idea.
Sketch #1: Bottom Navigation
My idea is to remove the sidebar navigation from twitter because of most function in the sidebar belongs to open profile and open collectibles. And also swiping to find swipe bar isn’t user-friendly for a user who doesn’t understand that, it’s best to keep the experience they used to, opening profile from the bottom navigation.
It's best to keep the experience to be user-friendly for all of the users, whether they are a new user or a comeback user. Because making them feel lesser effort to learn the experience again will make them feel enjoyable in using it.
Sketch #2: Replying Tweet
When the user clicks the reply icon, it will direct the user into viewing the detailed tweet with all of its comments while replying. This one’s to save user effort, rather than click reply and can’t see all of the comments then have to click the detailed tweet again to see all comments while replying.
Sketch #3: Opening a thread
The current thread is marked with a different interface with other tweets, so my idea is to make it simpler by giving the link to show the thread to the user and make it has a consistent interface with another tweet.
Sketch #4: Search
To let the user read more relateable topics based on their needs, I let them free to edit which topics they want to read on the explore page. And also to minimize overload content, I split trending with explore, so each page will have consistent content and minimize overload content.
Wireframe
After finishing with the sketch, I start designing my wireframe of redesigned Twitter. I change the icon in Thread and Tweet page with the Bookmark icon on the top right corner to make them easier when bookmarking the tweet or thread. In case they want to go back to read that again.
Final Design
So here is my final design for Twitter redesign
Key takeaways
Twitter is a great product with millions of users worldwide. Redesigning twitter is a challenging task for me because to come up with an idea to redesign a product with a good user experience. I also understand that my redesign may not be a perfect idea, but I’m still learning my way into becoming a better designer. Thank you for reading this! Cheers
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