Prathima's Miles & Milestones

Trell is India’s #1 Lifestyle app. It is based out of Namma Bengaluru in Koramangala. Users can post content on fashion, beauty, gadgets, travel, movies, cooking etc. The content is also searchable on Google. The users can win free trip to various places by posting vlog, blogs, inviting friends to Trell platform.

There current screen has many UI elements arranged unevenly in a grid system such that the multi-media & the textual content do not overlap. This made me fail to observe a key elements which can make my next content featured in the platform. Here’s how the current Home screen (v4.7.53) looks like.

Here are some of the UI changes I would suggest and why —

1. Display the number of coins earned

• To increase the number of sessions, app visits on a daily basis, as a user I need to be highly motivated on every app open.
• My expectation is that when I land on the home screen every time the coin balance can be numerically displayed beside it.
• For any user, to check the number of active coins at any given point, it takes an effort to tap on the coin to know my balance.
• If I want to see the coin logs such as history of my claimed rewards and unclaimed rewards at the moment, only then I will put my effort to tap on the coin balance on the Home screen.
• The importance of coins is chiselled really well for the users in the coin-details screen which includes legal ways of earnings coins in the app.

2. The uneven grid layout approach of displaying feed

• At any given point of scroll, a user can see 4 complete post or content.
• A human eye would miss the partially visible post either on the top or bottom while scrolling. This leads to leaky user engagement.
• For someone who has an OCD like me, the uniformity and alignment of posts matter a lot!

3. Differentiator — Feeds from the influencers I follow + Current featured posts on Trell

• By default, the app lands me in featured tab.
• On navigating to various growing categories, it takes a lot of swipes to lead to the posts of the influencers I follow.
• Since the differentiator factor here is just 2 — I should be able to switch on and off over a single tap for the ease and usability of the app.

4. Display the number of posts published on each category

• This ensures to the balance of content generated among all categories.
• Each post can have multiple tags irrespective of the trend. Whereas they would belong to one main category as a differentiator.
• This helps the content team to decide which category is long-lasting and a success plus which category needs affiliated content.

5. Numbers rounded up in terms of thousands for readability.

• In order to keep the interface de-cluttered, we need to free up some space for readability. This calls for concatenating digits.
• Only the most prominent features such as title of the post, views needs to be eye catchy to the users. This is debatable and calls for A/B testing.

6. The notification on the coin to be discarded. Instead to be appeared on the notification bell icon.

• It is a practice that all the notifications such as credited/debited are captured by the bell icon. Whereas tapping on the coin should only lead to the logs.
• This again leads to how important it is to display the number of coins earned in the home page (re-iterating #1)

For the points discussed above, here’s the wireframe of the Home screen of the Trell app.

Bonus points

“If my content has to be featured on Trell, what topics should I choose from?”

• Choose from the topics that has least number of content. In the wireframe shared, you can see that Fashion has only 3.2k content when compared to other topics. Lesser the number of posts on a particular category, easier it is to win with quality content beating the rest!
• Another way of ensuring that your next content will be featured is to observe the top 3 trending topics of the day. There’s definitely some good competition here, but again be unique and creative enough to win with your content.

Conclusion

• My intention was not to write a UX review on the app design. I am not a certified professional in designing. My suggestions are my personal opinions.
• I merely enjoy the process of redesigning established products and exploring new ideas.
• Feel free to refer to my hypothetical dating app idea and restructuring ride-sharing apps.
• Ideas and criticism for improvement are always welcomed!