Telegram iOS app improvements
TLDR: I made some improvements to the Telegram iOS app without breaking current experience: check the prototype.
Intro
I’m an experienced user and also User Experience designer. As a user I use a lot of apps for my needs, and as a designer I understand how to improve them.
In general, designing apps based on your own needs is a bad practice. Because my needs can differ from other users, and as a designer I should consider the needs of all kind of users, as well as market and business needs. So without proper in-depth research these are basically assumptions, but research for app with such massive userbase can be properly done only by Telegram, since it’s difficult to obtain comprehensive data from the outside.
So my job here is quite simple: I suggest ideas on how to improve app based on my experience both as a designer and a user. I provide ideas, try new things, improve myself, gather feedback and make everyone happy.
Telegram
Telegram is an instant messaging service that I use for a several reasons:
- Speed: it’s really fast and not burdened by unnecessary features.
- Security: it’s safe enough to be used in Russia and backed by Pavel Durov (ex-founder of VK, the biggest Russian social network), who has a good reputation in supporting freedom of speech.
- Userbase: it’s cross-platform and have already been used by many of my contacts.
What to improve
In general the app is quite convenient, and for my needs requires a little polishing and one nice-to-have function on which I’ll focus.
Some additional improvements can be found in prototype.
The Look
Currently Telegram looks like mix of Messages/Phone/Contacts apps, using the same arrangement of elements, icons and colors. It differs from them mainly by navigation bar, especially by unusually placed settings icon. Telegram neither replaces nor duplicates iOS apps functionality, therefore it’s quite confusing to see almost identical screens with different functionality. This doesn’t add any points to clarity.
Just changing blue color will help there a lot. Considering the support of custom themes on the Android, it’s silly to refuse this functionality there.
Unique icons set will also help to separate the application from others (not the Font Awesome as on screens, but an unique set designed specially for Telegram). And for such simple navigation and clear metaphors for icons, labels can be safely dropped to save additional space for content.
Channels
Channels are different from chats: they provide one-way content consuming, so they should be optimized for it.
- Unread: provide feed with all unread content from channels grouped by channels & time. If channel posted five posts in few hours, they should be displayed together for better context.
- Tags: grouping channels by tags will help to read content grouped by topics, without navigating through channels with one update in each.
- Channel: channel view should be redesigned to focus more on content: with full width text and images, rather than half-width bubbles.
PS
Feel free to leave feedback and follow me on twitter.
Next time I’ll do greater impact, as this time I’m slightly improved myself.
