Topic #4 PLUL: An Ultimate Design Scenario of one Social Media App Development Project

We are adapted to receive all kinds of RFP’s, our proficiency spans from numerous small and large scale projects, including a face for startups, applications for large enterprises to innovative mobile application development.

But once in a blue moon, we encounter some requests that compel us to ponder about certain issues related to designing, on account of their peculiar yet philanthropic approach to get an outcome that replicates the client’s vision behind its development.

One such benevolent client was a big social organization that wished to help the drug addicts, requested us to develop a social app that could serve as a platform to help drug addicts quit this vice and pursue a healthy life.

The vision behind this social media platform development was to create a distraction from drugs for the individuals by providing an interface to meet new people, connect with them and share their stories, take inspiration from each other, and even share a few activities of similar interests.

One such way to attain desired results was by providing anti-addiction resources to the people, be it in any as long as that is innovative and reliable enough to persuade them.  The client suggested that, fresh depiction and novel look are two of the main design challenges in social media app development.

The demand of this project was simplicity and a research on the mindset of addicted people in order to make them keen to view this social app.

Without a doubt, it was a piece of cake for us, but under the layers, it had some design threats that our proficient team met with creativity and research.

Below are the design aspects which juggled us in one of the social media app development project. We feel that we came up with the apt solutions and adapted to level up our business.

Simplicity

Problem

The audiences of this app were the drug addicts, so special care was needed to keep them engaged without annoying them.

There is a simple fact behind it, even we go through the same thing, if you are stressed and see an ambiguous user interface, definitely you will get worked up and shut it. This was the case with the audiences of this app, they are not prone to complex thinking, it can trigger them, make them angry and possibly they may never open the app again

Owing to their impaired vision, erratic mood swings and lack of patience, designing a complicated or distracting app would be a big no-no in this case.

Our Solution

Our first concern to solve design challenges in social media app development was to make the user interface as simple and comprehensive as possible. Each element had to be defined in simple terms relevant to its task to provide easy usability. If the users find it easier to explore and navigate then we can keep them engaged for a comparatively long time.

We adopted a few things enlisted here,

• Larger and bolder fonts to depict a clear meaning
• Subtle color scheme that can be visually soothing
• Negative spaces to highlight the important elements
• Images to make the interaction pleasant and satisfying
• All the features are kept visually viable and just a click away

These simple but effective tricks to maintain simplicity not only helped us in coming up with a near perfect design for this app, but also it stirred a new thought process in our minds for other projects as well along with our regular design process.

Branding

Problem

Well, incorporation of branding with an app is today’s necessity along with the organization’s demand. Moreover, it cannot be denied as the brand name matters and it needs to be associated with every possible platform that is or will be a face of the brand.

This social organization was indeed a large one, and they expected to keep their brand aroma intact on their app as well.

Now our only concern was that the audience that is already in a sensitive state of mind may or may not be accustomed to the use of branding strategies on the app.

Excessive use of branding can lead to complexity in UI design that can affect the concentration of the drug addicts, who in any case are going to interact for a short time.

Our Solution

We were sure to get the branding issue settled and saving their brand value from degrading by blending our branding tactics smartly in the UI design.

By taking care of a few things we managed to retain the brand esteem of the organization,

• The logo and icons on the app depicted the exact essence of the brand as we followed their brand rules completely.
• The color palette for the app was maintained according to the brand image.
• Inclusion of characters and emotions that can convey the brand’s social message was considered as we were developing the app for a social organization.
• Consistency was maintained in the entire app design to depict a uniform brand image.
• In order to define the exact vision of the app, a small but crisp value proposition statement should be kept near the logo.
• The tone of design is decided by the type of business or organization and here we needed a friendly and comforting tone owing to the social organization.
• Each organization is unique in its own way and our task was to depict that uniqueness by getting all the above design elements and strategies together.

It was a great experience to make a medley of branding and designing for solving design challenges in social media app development.

Colors

Problem

Colors play a major role in influencing our mind to trigger various emotions, whether it is in the real world or any platform. Colors that are warm basically provoke aggressiveness and a rush of emotions with increased heartbeats and the feeling of defiance towards everyone. Colors are not major design challenges in social media app development for our creative designers but here we have to keep in mind that we designing a social media app for drug-addicted people.

Now our task was keeping this psychological fact in mind for addicted people and come up with a list of colors that can avoid agitation to their mind to result in any kind of manic behavior.

Our Solution

After a short research, we settled on using the cool colors and went with the blue side of the spectrum that included blue, purple and green. We stuck to limit our color palette to only 3 colors to make it look elegant yet interactive.

The cool colors are said to be calm and make people stress-free, and that’s what our task was all about while meeting this issue of selecting colors for this social media app.

Drug addicts get easily agitated by warm colors such as red, orange and yellow, thus our design of cool colors can keep them calm and hang on for a longer while.

The design challenges in social media app development are not just limited to it, the same challenges arise in website and software development also.

One more lesson learnt about the colors, indeed it makes a huge difference..!!

Consistency

Problem

The user base of this app suffered from illogical thinking and lack of concentration, so to feed something to their mind needs a common approach or style throughout the process.

User interaction, attention, and experience were playing a vital role in design challenges in social media app development

We can keep addicted people interacting with the app only and only by keeping consistency in the design. The minute they find something unusual or different, it bothers them to grasp the new view and may land up getting angry.

Our Solution

We decided to keep the consistent design a bit natural and used simple language, so that it can be quickly learned with least effort and they can use the entire app easily.

You can imagine it as teaching alphabets to a child, knowledge of alphabets can lead to the understanding of words and sentences.

So once you enlighten the audience about the basic elements of the app such as shapes, layouts, icons etc, they can easily navigate through the entire app.

This was not much of an issue of design challenges in social media app development, right? It is one of the basics that we always follow.

So far it all went well and we were very close to achieve a near perfect app. But hold on, a few more issues to share which you should know and are of equal importance.

Navigation

Problem

So far all the aspects are met by our designing team, now one of the vital steps is to arrange the contents and elements in such a way that they do not crowd up the page as we have to keep in mind that our target audience has the inability to concentrate.

If all the pages are linked in the navigation bar then it will give a chaotic appeal to the user and their mind may lead to a confused state, and thus they will not open the app again. Here we had to synthesize the navigation into the design of the screens in order to make it look more engaging rather than ambiguous.

Our Solution

Our designing mind decided to keep the navigation effortless by making use of the design strategies to give user the most convenient way to reach to their desired location. Some of the aspects of navigation module that were employed in solving design challenges in social media app development are:

• Highlight the current location of the user in the app’s structure in the navigation sections
• Simplicity is maintained in terms of clear, bold and large fonts, use of white spaces and subtle colors and use of graphics
• The search box is kept for the user to look for desired content
• Links in all the screens are included to lead to related screens of the app
• The consistency of the navigation elements is kept at the top priority

Do you have any similar design issues with your project development? Let us know and we can help you with that, you know our eye for detail by now :)

REACH US

Layout

Problem

When you are designing an app for a mass with a sensitive mindset you need to be rational with the creativity. As this mass gets influenced with any complexity in the page, the layout and placing of the elements should be kept as clear as possible to deliver the exact meaning of what we want to convey to the users.

Our Solution

As designers, layout becomes a primary concern because it decides the flow of the content and their positions. For dealing with these layout and structure design challenges in social media app development we used the following techniques to devise the perfect app layout:

• Provide a visual hierarchy by keeping the most relevant content and elements in gradable order
• Use of negative spaces to allow the contents to breathe and make them easily noticeable
• Placement of elements to keep the flow natural and can keep user engaged
• We tried to keep the alignment in order to complement the sections that are included, for this grid spacing and dimensions played a major role to give that perfect look
• Size of certain important sections were kept large to make it evident
• Uniformity was maintained in the layout in all the pages to keep the experience intuitive.

We believe in transparency and to our belief sharing such blogs can lead our clients to have an insight of how we work and our experiences can lead to increase in their trust. We have a prolific campaign for this by the name Project Life Until Live.

Accessibility

Problem

Actually this challenge was not a surprise for us as the audiences for this challenge were prone to get agitated if ever they experience any inaccessibility to the desired content. Our task here was to give accessibility a tad high priority while designing because if the users are not accessible to the content than they won’t be able to experience the true vision behind this app.

One of the ideas that had popped during inception of the app features was to design a section of rehab courses that consisted of various types of courses for the addicts.

It was designed more like a game and whenever you finish a course you get reward points. These points are added to your profile which increases the strength your profile.

Thus, in lure of a stronger profile the individual is motivated and he/she enrolls in other courses also. This in turn benefits their addiction and reduces it as they are now more engaged and inclined towards something other than addiction.

Our Solution

We have met all the design threats with effective design strategies, in this one we thought of give it a practical approach and then infuse accessibility in the design of the app.

We started by arranging the content structure to solve content accessibilities design challenges in social media app development. After achieving this we moved to the inclusion of the interaction factor by making use of the typefaces, colors, images, etc. But the goal behind all these was to serve the user with everything that we have on our menu.

Another fact that had to be kept in mind was that the design had to look identical on all the platforms to keep the user engaged with our app in one way or another which in turn was for their benefit.  

This was a fun task for us also to design such rewarding courses, and that can even increase the time spent on the app, so it’s a win-win situation for both. It can be incorporated into other apps also to increase engagement time of users.

Clarity

Problem

Clarity can be interpreted in many ways, clarity in design, clarity of thoughts to portray, clarity of ideas to reflect etc. all are the design challenges in social media app development. For this app, we needed clarity of design, as addicted people are agitated by even a tad of confusion or their inability to understand new stuff.

So here need of the interface design was to be clear, crisp and to the point. The addicted people should find it readable and easier rather than getting confused.

For the individual who opens your app, initially they need to recognize it to interact with it.

Our Solution

We decided to go with a design that has only required elements, that too in a concise manner. A strict no was for explanations and cumbersome content that could possibly make the unpleasing impression.

How could we forget the navigation, it was designed to be as lucid as possible and large fonts were used to make the content readable and needless to say it turned out to beat our expectations.

Here we have adopted this clarity and concise theme, but it does not work every time. What our experience says is that theme varies with the clients, their demand and type of audience. Not everyone is fond of the simple look, some like to make it look a bit messy too.

Efficiency

Problem

When you design an app for a special purpose and with a specific goal, then it has to be made sure that our primary concern is the efficiency of that goal in the first hand.

Here the case is about the drug addicts, we need to ensure that the basic functions for which the app is developed are working properly or not.

Addicted people tend to lose interest even from their favorite activities and are buried in depression day by day, so this app should be such that it has a simple streamlined approach that is efficient enough to serve the basic purpose of distraction.

Our Solution

We are used to designing powerful user interfaces with the best UI/UX design skills, but sometimes you need to focus more on the core and keep design subtle. Functioning should be efficient and smooth, so that the users don’t face any complications during interactions.

Our approach was simple,

• Figure out the main functionalities this app will serve
• Prioritize the functions
• Design the functions in a way that less effort is required to perform them
• Design icons, buttons, shapes, etc. in bold and noticeable way.
• Made sure not to hide anything in the context menus.

In this last issue, we addressed one of the most relevant design challenges in social media app development in today’s world which is faced by a lot of people, too many efforts are needed to perform a basic regular task. In a long run people find it convenient to choose a rather easy and efficient platform if they find ours too fancy and complicated, loaded with functionalities.

Conclusion

Finally, when you rise from all the small and big challenges, the outcome is definitely going to woo you, and yes that’s what happened to us. Client’s happiness leads to our utmost satisfaction.