Designing a website for online app reviews, rankings and news.

What is apps.de?

The purpose of Apps.de is to provide users with expert and honest mobile app reviews, buying advices, rankings and price comparison. Also, publishing of industry news, statistics and predictions. The majority of the content will be created by freelancers that have proficiency in the fields of new technology and mobile apps. Furthermore, the website provides opportunity to mobile app developers to request reviews of their apps. 

For the MVP, and after secondary research, three acticle categories were defined:

• Best Apps - These are articles that rank a number of mobile apps by their quality, within specific category, field, industry, platform etc. For example, Top 10 Best Apps for Car Navigation.

• Reviews - These are articles that focus on a single app, and provide in-depth information about it, based on thorough testing by experts.

• News - These articles aim to provide recent noteworthy information.

Competitive analysis

The competitive analysis involved creation of competitor profiles in relation to marketing and design within the SWOT framework. This process helped me understand the current situation in the field and identify opportunities and challenges.

Interviews

Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with people at age between 18 and 29. Based on the interviews the following findings were gathered.

• Users do thorough online research before paying for an app.

• Even free apps are sometimes subject to user investigation due to fear of malware.

• Most of the time users start their research on Google

• Users often download, quickly check, and delete the free apps.

• Browsing both expert reviews and user ratings is common.

• Often they will visit several websites before making purchase decision.

• However, they don't read all the information available - they scan it.

Building empathy

User persona

Using the collected qualitative data from the interviews, the following user persona was created (Figures 1 & 2).

Primary user goal

Based on the conducted interviews, the primary user goal was defined as:

I want to be able to make fast and easy decisions regarding an app before deciding to download/ buy/ use it. 

User journey map

After defining the user goal, a user journey map was created to visually illustrate the user flow through the website. Beginning with the first contact and continuing through the process of interaction, and long-term engagement (Figure 3).

Information architecture

Based on the competitive analysis, user interviews, and card sorting, the sitemap for Apps.de was defined (Figure 4).

Wireframing, prototyping & usability testing 

Apparent from the websites name, the design of the screens began with mobile first. This approach was also validated by competitor analysis and user interviews. Nevertheless, designs were also scaled up for larger devices, namely for tablet and desktop (Figure 9).

Low-fidelity prototyping

Using pen and paper, design iterations were conducted, the process went through a variety of design solutions (Figure 5). After some testing and internal discussions a clear user flow was designed (Figure 6)

High-fidelity prototyping

After some paper prototyping improvement, wireframe and clickable prototype were crafted using Adobe XD (Figures 7 & 8). Then, usability testing was conducted which revealed minor issues in the content design and some interactions. The necessary amendments were made.

Due to the nature of the website, it is expected that new content will be published on regular basis. Hence, Content Management System (CMS) had to be integrated (Figure 10). 

In its MVP version, the content on the website will be published only by the admin(s). That is, the authors will send their articles to the admin, then the admin will proofread them, and ultimately upload them on live. As the number of the freelance authors increases, Author account can be implemented so they can upload content on their own.

Visual design

The visual design was crafted by iterating from mood board with different colors, fonts and visuals to finally creating a style guide (Figures 11 & 12). 

Conclusion

Being a tech enthusiast myself, working on Apps.de was extraordinarily rewarding. I was able to try out some of the new Adobe XD features and streamline my design process. Because of time and resources constraints, I was not able to conduct more user interviews which would have been beneficial. 

Nonetheless, currently, the design process on Apps.de is completed, the projects is in its implementation stage. Then, the website will be tested internally before its beta launch.