This Week in Design: Kayak, VSCO, Pinterest, and more

Every week I’ll post a few examples of good, bad, and questionable design picked from apps and websites I use everyday.

The Good

Kayak’s improved calendar feature makes it easy to tell at a glance when fares are the cheapest.

Kayak
It’s that time of the year! I’ve been browsing for deals on holiday travel, and was delighted to see that Kayak has added a small but important feature. When selecting travel dates, the calendar view shows you which dates have good rates, as indicated by the small green dot. Super handy! Most of my travel dates are relatively flexible, so knowing that traveling on a Thursday instead of a Friday is really helpful. I’m a longtime Kayak fan, and am glad to know they’re continually improving!

Bloomberg (via Apple News)
Throughout the day, I browse articles via the Apple News app. This is a small thing, but I was delighted at the attention to detail in Bloomberg’s article experience. As I scrolled through the article, each pull quote zoomed in and popped into place. It’s just a nice touch that brought a little extra joy to my reading experience.

The Bad

VSCO’s landing page with the circular “joystick” navigation and the mysterious icon in the top left.

VSCO
I want to like it, I do. But I could not figure out how to use VSCO. From the home screen, it’s very difficult to navigate. In theory, I like the idea of innovating and trying alternative design solutions, but the “joystick” navigation style just didn’t work for me, and let me feeling like parts of the app were hidden/inaccessible. And what is that icon in the upper right hand corner supposed to represent? I still can’t figure it out?

However, I was delighted by the rainbow loading bar at the top of each screen. But, sadly, not enough to win me over as a dedicated user.

My profile page (left) and the teeny, tiny hidden menu where “Logout” is located (right).

Pinterest
It’s a small thing, but I could NOT figure out how to log out of my account. I actually had to ask Google how to do it, which is a pretty bad sign. Turns out, the account options (including logout) are hidden under the ambiguous ellipsis icon. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I generally interpret the ellipsis (or its rotated cousin, the kebab) as “more” or basically a junk drawer of things I probably don’t need. The problem with this is that the icon provides basically no information scent, except “hey, there’s some stuff here!” which is not particularly helpful.

And the Uncertain

The old FitBit (left) with “Add” included in the tab bar, the new FitBit (right) with “Add” as a floating action button

Fitbit
I’m an avid FitBit user, and in the past week, I noticed a small change to their UI. The “Add” button used to be located within the tab bar, has now become a floating action button, hovering just above the tab bar. It’s a small thing, but I find the “add” button is much easier to overlook now because it visually gets lost in the interface. It’s only appears on the main dashboard, limiting the ease of quickly inputting data into the app. Personally, I’m not a fan of this change, and would be curious to know what discussions and metrics drove this change.

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