Design Critique #3: Dribbble (iOS)
Hey guys! Hope this article finds you in good health! During these unprecedented times, remote working becomes the norm. However, our team has been collaborating remotely since day one so we are pretty used to it! Grab some snacks and get ready to tune in to this design critique session!
Have you used the Dribbble app on your phone? Do you like the mobile app more or the website?
Introduction
If you haven’t heard of Dribbble, that’s totally fine too! Dribbble is most well-known among creative communities such as graphic design, UI/UX design, industrial design, etc. It is usually used by people to share their creative works, get inspired, learn from other designers, connect with design communities, and maybe potentially get discovered by other designers.
Since the five of us are in the field of UX design, we all have our own experience using the Dribbble website. However, using the mobile version of Dribbble would be another story. For this particular design critique session, we are going to focus on the Dribbble app for iOS devices (phone). We found that there was plenty of room for the mobile version of Dribbble to improve.
Here are our two cents! Enjoy!
Mission & Target Audience
To understand Dribbble’s end goal and its target audience, let’s first take a look at Dribbble’s mission statement. As clearly stated on Dribbble’s website, “Dribbble is the heart of the designer community. We’re on a mission to build the world’s best community for creatives to share, grow, and get hired.” Now we know that Dribbble is targeting the designer community. Therefore, in this article, our analysis and discussions are going to center around its target users — designers.
Not quite friendly for first-timers.
While the mobile version of Dribbble might be easy for a designer who is already familiar with the desktop version to get a hang of, it is certainly challenging for a new Dribbble user or a rookie designer who is trying to get into the field. The activity page and the message page are not intuitive for first-time users if they haven’t used the app much. The activity page and the message page remain empty for a first-time user. This consequently creates the confusion that these two pages are empty but they seem like two important components as they are two of the five major functions displayed in the menu bar at the bottom of the interface. The user might also wonder what kinds of activity or messages would eventually show up on these pages.
In order to build the best design community online, Dribbble certainly wants to increase or at least maintain a relatively decent user retention rate. The key here would be to keep the user engaged and interested and of course, attract more outstanding designers. Therefore, reducing confusion for first-timers is important. In this case, the activity page actually shows different interactions among designers. It indeed is an important part of the app, yet a simple walk-through tutorial that appears when new users sign in for the first time would be extremely useful for eliminating concerns.
Should I press this button? What is that button for?
During our design critique session, we discovered a number of problems regarding the buttons on the app. We all agreed that we liked the simplicity of the buttons on the interface. However, the arrangement, color and some logic of the buttons seemed problematic, which could end up being a huge roadblock for Dribbble to achieve a seamless user experience.
Understand the fixed “like” and “folder” buttons
Apparently, these are crucial. The “like” button is used for people to express their emotions towards a work, acknowledge an amazing design, and support other designers. The “folder” button, on the other hand, allows people to save the design work they like to their collection. On the detail page of design work, there are two places for people to click on the “like” buttons for the design. One in the top right corner, and one below the image of the design work. These two buttons are all clickable and when a user scrolls the page, the buttons on the top right corner would always appear.
This is understandable since Dribbble might increase the chance that a user “likes” and “saves” a design piece. From a user perspective, a user who is a designer might also want other people to follow them because of their excellent pieces. A “follow” button can easily help achieve this user’s needs and connect designers with one another.
Folder or Bucket?
On an iOS device, when users click on the “folder” button, a card would pop up for the users to choose a “bucket” to save the design work. This might make users wonder what a bucket is and whether it actually means a folder since the icon/button is in the shape of a document folder.
Clickable vs. Unclickable
Dribbble has great simplicity when it comes to its buttons and icons. However, a little bit too much of simplicity might also be a problem. From the detail page, we can see that all the buttons and icons are gray. From a user perspective, a gray icon may indicate that the icon is unclickable. One might say that “Well, in this case, the icons are all clickable and that the color gray is to reduce distraction from the design work.” This is a great theory but unfortunately, that is not quite true.
A “curious” user might want to be “adventurous” and try clicking on all the gray icons on the page. Soon he/she would find out that the “eye” icon and the “message bubble” icon are unclickable. Then he/she starts to wonder the logic behind this design. Clearly, the color gray makes it difficult for users to understand the meaning of those icons.
Searching for Inspirations
Browsing by colors
On Dribbble, the feature of browsing by color hex code is popular among some designers as it helps them brainstorm ideas and get inspiration for their own design. However, this feature is not only difficult to find on the main page for new users but also requires the designer to know the exact hex code of the color they want.
Search, search, search
“Search” is no doubt a crucial function in the Dribbble app. Dribbble has made it easy for users to find the search button by always showing it in the top right corner of the screen. However, the user experience of this function still has a lot to improve. As soon as a user taps the “search button”, he or she is directed to the search page, where there is a search box at the top, and popular keywords showing below in alphabetical order. The logic behind this design appears to be quite confusing to us. This “contact book” style is effective only when a user knows exactly what keyword to search for.
Let’s take a step back and think like a designer. When would designers want to search for some other design work? Well, maybe they are in need of inspiration or maybe they are curious about a specific work or specific designer.
Here are two improvements that could make the experience better:
- Categorize keywords by object categories/color theme/mood
- Include a function to search for a specific color (This would also make it easy for users to browse by color)
Community Engagement Strategy
According to Dribbble’s mission, it is super important for Dribbble to increase user engagement with the design community. However, on the app, it is not clear if they belong to a team on the detail page. Based on our experience with the app, designers tend to form communities/teams offline and it is not clear how people can form a community via Dribbble. If Dribbble could advocate people to form communities over Dribbble rather than to interact with each other as separate teams, then the design community will certainly become even more connected.
Other Interesting Insights
Desktop vs. Mobile app
From what we can see, the desktop version of Dribbble has much more rich features and most designers we interviewed said they normally use the desktop/website version instead of the mobile version. Dribbble focuses more on visual artifacts and animations. When a designer decides to upload a design work on Dribbble, he/she most likely would upload a high-resolution image or gif file. With limited storage on the phone, the designer is not likely to upload the work on the phone. However, the mobile app did provide people with an easy way to browse others’ design work when they don’t have a computer with them. For example, with the mobile app, users might be able to get inspired when waiting in line for a coffee. Therefore, a mobile app version is certainly necessary.
Dribbble might not be as rookie-friendly as you think.
When it comes to design works, Dribbble might have a high standard compared to other apps such as Pinterest. The good thing is that it is easy for a designer to discover outstanding work. However, this also makes it harder for rookies and some entry-level designers to get recognized and hired by other designers. It is difficult for a student who is new to the field but has a great passion to gain feedback from seasoned designers via Dribbble. And the student might feel frustrated and that he/she does not fit in the community.
Recap
We made it this far! Wow! Fun fact: when we were doing our critique session, we also took this time and discovered a lot of cool design work on Dribbble! Here’s a list of the main points we discussed and it might be helpful for you if you are considering critique Dribbble as well!
- How might we design strategies for a platform like Dribbble to boost user engagement and form a more connected community?
- Is there a way to maintain the quality of the design work on Dribbble while holding a welcoming vibe for someone who just got into the design field?
- On Dribbble’s search page, why would Dribbble decide to list all the popular keywords in alphabetical order (A-Z)? What’s the rationale behind this particular design?
- In what context do you think using the alphabetical order will be reasonable?
- If most designers upload their work from a desktop, why would the mobile app version of Dribbble include this function? (It is also one of the five main items in the menu bar)
Takeaways
We discussed a lot of features but the ones mentioned in this article were the ones that we thought would really help Dribbble achieve its mission of creating the best online design community.
One thing we did differently this time than the previous critique sessions was that we really took some time and look at Dribbble’s mission statement and its target users. This greatly helps us scope down our critique and focus on the designer's perspective rather than everyone. We learned that understanding the business goals of a product is just as important as understanding the target users.
Upcoming Session
Thank you for reading! Our next week’s app is Yelp! Hopefully, this gets you excited! We are an app critique team so how can we miss this app?:) What is your experience with this app? Do you like it? Feel free to shoot us any ideas that you have!!
Until next time, stay safe and healthy everyone!! #StayHomeAndCritique :D
