Redesigning Reddit

It’s project 3 time and we must go it alone. A rather daunting task, live by the sword, die by sword so to speak!

This time we were each given the task of dissecting a well known app of our choice. Specifically, our task was to measure the app versus the popular ’10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design’ by Jakob Nielsen. These principles are not the only of their kind, but like all the others, they all ensure that user interface designs are based on empirical research, not just made up by some dude.

As these principles have been around for years, many of the well known apps have paid attention to them. Therefore it became quite a challenge to find an app who violates any of these principals. Until…I found ‘reddit’, that well known social news aggregation, content rating, and forum social network that everyone knows of, but few will admit to devouring. While due to the text content, many might choose to browse reddit on a larger desktop device, but there is an app version that appears to get a little less attention. This is perhaps the reason I found it so easy to find quite a few violations of Nielsens principles!

Principal 2. Match between the system and the real world

This principle argues that the system should speak the users’ language, with phrases, words, and conventions demonstrated in the real world. Reddit violates this by not making it clear which app you are on at any given point. Below are just the first two screens, but at no point is there a reddit logo or icon or anything suggest this is a ‘reddit’ app to be seen.

The reddit logo should be on the home page, or at the bare minimum, the reddit colours or icons are referenced on the home page. I took it upon myself to sketch out possible solutions:

Principle 3. User control and freedom

Under this principle, it is considered that users will always make mistakes, and therefore need a clearly marked ‘emergency exit’ to leave the unwanted state. The below three screens are an example of this. Clicking on the hamburger menu takes you to the second screen, and clicking on the arrow takes you to an equally confusing screen. Plus the home button on the bottom just takes you back to the first screen.

I gave it a go sketching out some possible solutions for this violation, and came up with the below:

Principle 4. Consistency and standards

Under this principle, users should not have to wonder whether different words, actions or situations mean the same thing. A relatively weak violation could be found in the reddit ‘Inbox’, particularly the ‘Activity’ and ‘Messages’ sections. There are a few issues here, starting with the typing error of ‘Wow, such empty’. This will likely confuse users, and maybe even turn them off the app. Similarly, it’s the same message under activity and messages, so users might be a little confused of how to ‘get active’ for example.

In response to these small but no less relevent violations, I sketched out the below possible solutions:

Principle 6. Recognition rather than recall

Users don’t want to have to work mentally when scrolling through an app. This principle suggests that we need to reduce the load on the users memory by making objects, actions and options visible. An example of this NOT happening is related to ‘Settings’. In the current set up, how the F does anyone find settings?

It is not clear you need to click the avatar button, and even when you do, you need to remember to go to the bottom of the screen for settings. This might be fixed by making the settings button much more clear, either by placing it on the home screen, or having it much more visible after you press the avatar:

Principle 8. Aesthetic and minimalist design

I don’t think Reddit ever understood this principle, as it violates it in a number of screens. When a user actually finds where the ‘Settings’ are, they then need to scroll not once, but thrice, just to get to important information, like the ‘Impressum’ or the ‘Help Center’. The below picture shows the first, second and third scrolls, my fingers are tired just looking at it!

Potential solutions are aimed at simply making the screen more…. Simple!

In order to combat such violations of such strict principles, I needed to dissect the app more, and figure out which colours, icons, typography and buttons make the app what it is. This helped me develop the style tile and UI kit respectively:

I now had all the tools I needed to redesign reddit!

Principle 2.

Here, you can clearly see the reddit logo missing from the first screen, but ever present in the after screens.

Principle 3.

This principle suggests that users always need an ‘emergency exit’ when completing tasks. My attempts to clear this up can be seen in the after screens below:

Principle 4.

Typing errors happen to the best of us. But on such a popular and well known app as Reddit, they are down round inexcusable! To try and alleviate such a vicious crime, and to provide for clarity around ‘activity’, I suggested the below:

Principle 6.

I again had a few options here, to not put too much load on the users memory. The first option is not super ground breaking, but involves simply changing the avatar symbol to the settings symbol:

Alternatively, the settings button could be displayed in a much more prominent position, as displayed in the below before and after:

Principle 8.

Finally, the task here was to try and remove all ‘irrelevant’ information as decided upon by yours truly, and to try and get all of the most important information onto one page, vs. three!

In the end, I might not be winning any design awards, figma got me, it got me good. But as a first try going it alone, the results were fine.

If reddit wants its users to…… read it, they might care to take a look at Jakob Nielsen’s principles. You’ve been warned reddit!