Kickstarter Redesign

Introduction

As a designer with a background in business economics, I have always been passionate about experiences that marry entrepenurship and technology. Through design, I hope to one day make the experience of crowdfunding more accessible and enjoyable.

However, upon downloading the Kickstarter app, though it was beautifully made, the designer in me noticed minute changes to address.

…but as soon as I came to this realization, I became inspired to embark on what became a month long journey to the holy grail — the iOS app that Kickstarter deserves.

Trip down memory lane

The original Kickstarter app for iPhone felt almost like Instagram or Vine, with a long vertical river of upcoming projects. That’s a great approach if people use your service only chronologically, but Kickstarter patrons navigate the site in a number of ways: by category, by popularity, by close date, and even randomly.

The new app design had a few advantages over the old version. For one, it was a much more distinctive-looking app. The entire UI was not only swipe-based, but consistent in orientation no matter where you were in Kickstarter’s navigation hierarchy (i.e. a swipe left or right always brings you to the next Kickstarter project, no matter where you are).

With iOS10, Kickstarter released a much-needed update based on the principles of Complexion Reduction.

While this new interface was much easier to navigate, I still felt that there was room for improvement. Despite its simplified color palette and enlarged typography, the interface felt cluttered, confusing and even claustrophobic at times.

I approached my redesign in three steps, while conducting research throughout:

• Core Navigation
• New Feature - Adding Campaigns
• Visual Interface

Core Navigation: Project Discovery

One of the first things that I found out was that users of kickstarters generally fell somewhere on the following user personas:

Project Backers:

• Browse all projects frequently to find the right project to back.
• Usually focused on the 'Most Funded' projects.
• Visual Interface is very important to the overall experience.

Project Campaigners:

• Browse all projects occasionally to find competitive campaigns to learn from and similar campaigns to judge public interest.
• Needs the entire catalogue to be mobile friendly so he can add/monitor projects on the go.
• Encouraged backers to support his/her vision is key.

While Project Campaigners are indeed more interested in adding and monitoring their campaign, they show signs of using the mobile app for browsing campaigns, be it for inspiration, lessons or just for fun. This coupled with the frequent use from the Project Backers makes the user task to find different projects using categories and subcategories all the more important.

Heatmap Analysis

As you can see above, the heatmap clearly shows anything to do at the top of the screen is an uncomfortable gesture for the user. However, the current category selection is placed at the very top. Take a look below:

Treating the toolbar as a mechanism to discover new categories is an approach that makes sense given Kickstarters website information architecture. However, the way that users need to currently navigate to categories feels very tacked on. I found that users weren’t comfortable with reaching out to control the page from solely the top section. This led to an uncomfortable thumb position which over time served as a deterrent to switch categories.

If Kickstarter wants to expand to the project backers side of the spectrum, they have to do it in a way that brings their existing user base along. This means creating a category discovery experience centered around ease of navigation and clarity. Enter… updated navigation

Updated Navigation

My updated navigation is a new experience made to bridge the gap between Backers and Contributors, replacing the current “top toolbar dropdown”. It was born out of the understanding that users who are picky about how they decide what category to select and what displays on their discover feed.

The scrollable bar under the toolbar was also not gesture friendly for users. According to Apple Design Guidlines, it is not recommended to add a top navigation and bottom in the same screen. Kickstarter however has three navigation channels on the same page which just leads to a cluttered page that ultimately leaves the users experience confusing.

A better experience would be presenting the categories as a whole new tab in the bottom navigation - which gives the user just enough flexibility to easily navigate to and decide the categories of their liking without stretching their thumb. The homepage was also redesigned to showcase the larger typography by segregating the page into 4 sections which were originally on the scrollable bar on the top.

Additionally the current inbox which was the only way for contributors to access information about their campaigns was nestled away inside the profile. Profile itself was extremely similar to Activity and did not need a seperate spot on the bottom navigation. Take a look at the current flow below:

After looking at different options, I finally settled on bringing the profile and inbox right at the top of the homepage. I realize this goes against the arguments I have made above about uncomofortable gestures, however inbox and profile are pages not that often visited and thus will be less problematic for the user on the toolbar.

I have come to understand that, through a more user friendly bottom navigation, the user is able to establish an immediate connection to the projects they discover. In addition, the inbox moving to the front has the potential to provide the user a chance to interact with others all the while making it more user friendly for project campaigners. Eventually allowing the app to evolve and grow with the user.