Redesigning Decibell Android App
Recently I have come across the newly released app called Decibell. I liked the idea and after using it for some time I thought about a few changes which I think can improve the overall user experience.
What is Decibell?
A voice-based microblogging & micro-podcasting platform which makes you express better. Have no more camera fear just speak, share & inspire.
Here my main focus will be to improve User experience rather than the User interface so there I am not changing any kind of color combinations or fonts but trying to improve the overall layouts and hierarchy of the elements in particular screens. I have left a few screens for redesigning because of the time constraints but will update the article whenever I get time.
Home Screen
The first thing I noticed on the home screen is the upper navigation bar is empty except there is only a title. There is a bottom navigation bar so I designed the upper navigation bar including all the important navigation actions.
Right now the app does not have any sticky element which can show the currently playing voice and it is a must to have a good user experience while scrolling the feed.
In a feed post, I haven’t changed much but one thing which I thought important is user should be able to know the length of the voice before playing the voice in seconds. And the hashtags should be highlighted differently than the post texts.
Right now the messaging option is not enabled in the app but when it comes the messaging action will be on the extreme right of the app bar.
Create Post
While creating the post I wanted to encourage the user to actually tap the mic and talk to the world so I changed the create post to “Talk” and mentioned the tagline “Talk to the world in 60s”. Of course, other options like adding an audio file, adding location and info are there just relocated them as per the importance.
While recording the audio the there was no progress bar so to improve that I designed the circular progress bar with the completed seconds in the center and of course submit button will be enabled after the audio input received from the file or from the mic.
Notifications
Just designed the empty notification screen.
Profile
First thing was to design the empty screen while there are no talks.
I added the follower option as well because it is also an important metric.
The edit and other things will be in the settings screen.
Settings
Right now in the app, there are a lot of screens involved for settings but I wanted to simplify it and make it a single screen so made all the options on the same screens and relocated the logout option in the bottom left corner as it will be the least bothered option.
The notification settings do not need a separate screen just for two options.
The right icon on the app bar will redirect to the about screen.
Edit Profile
The main things I changed are the input labels. If there is no text in the input field then the label will show (for example in bio in new screen) otherwise the text will show.
The audio bio is a good feature so I wanted to highlight that and encourage the user to make the audio bio so mentioned the tagline “Audio bio stands out” and gave the option to the user to play the audio bio or change it. And for “save” I preferred the icon over the text, its just the personal preference.
About
Last but not least About section. There was not much to do but thought to make it on the single screen rather than opening the separate screen for about details. And the privacy policy is not that much important so relocated to the bottom left corner.
Conclusion
As I have said my emphasis was not on the UI development so I know there are a lot of UI changes in terms of color combinations, layouts, and fonts but I was more inclined to improve the overall user experience.
I hope you liked the whole case study. This is my first UX case study so give the claps which can motivate me to come up with more case studies like this.
Thank you for reading
