Consistency
At first, I struggled with consistency. I was unnecessarily using too many shades of greys and blacks and also many text sizes and weights. This was hard to keep up with and if I continued this way, the interface would look inconsistent. To fix this, I created a component guide which limited the colours and type I was using. It also included stroke weights and corner radiuses too, for example. This guide was great to reference from and it also made designing quicker as I didn’t have to make the same decisions on colour etc. over and over again. If I was to start again, I would create this guide earlier so I didn’t need to go back and fix things.
Research gap
When designing the screen “Manage subscription”, I hit a wall. This page had to include the current subscription the user is subscribed to and the others which are available. However, I had not yet researched in detail the type of subscription options I should be providing. Therefore, I had to stop mid-design and figure this out. Since I didn’t spend much time on this particular area of research, I will likely have to go back in semester 2 and update these. It is not a huge issue as I will need to look further into how I will price the product at that point anyway.
Designing for a tablet
This was my first time designing for a horizontal tablet screen. Therefore, making decisions about the layout was sometimes difficult. Some of my screens have 2 columns and some have 3 to allow for additional content. When looking back at them, I think they sometimes lack consistency. Once I receive feedback on these I will be able to go back and improve them.
Lots of features
As I was doing research and getting feedback, it felt like more and more features were being added constantly. This made it difficult to know where to put them all. The main navigation splits into 5 sections: profile, home, explore, progress and quests. I think it will be clear to users what type of content will be within these. However, when they explore deeper, I worry that they may get lost. Of course this is just an assumption and can be proven through user testing which I will carry out next semester. I tried my best to strategically place pages in sections where they will be expected. When a user enters a section, the links to additional pages were made clear. Going forward, I will try not to add more unnecessary features and focus on the ones I have currently.
Keeping it engaging