iOS and Android apps
UNiDAYS is a popular student discount platform with a native mobile app available on iOS and Android. The app’s design emphasises simplicity, speed, and accessibility, targeting Gen-Z and millennial students who need quick access to deals from brands like Apple, ASOS, and Levi’s.
My role
The challenge was to create a native iOS and Android application to replace the current dynamic website that was being used.
The outcome had to use the latest native UX best practices and expected user behavioural patterns as to not alienate users. As well as this, the app needed to be as lean as possible.
Key challenges:
Slick functionality without compromising premium screen estate
Challenge
The way the UNiDAYS website worked was that businesses would pay a premium fee to have their card placed higher up the website than the other businesses.
This new app, needed to feel familiar yet not compromise the current ecosystem that had been set up previously.
Solution
I researched fully into each opperating systems ‘style’ of how UNiDAYS could integrate the ecosystem that we have created.
Android used tabbing (swiping) to navigate through the categories of perks, whilst iOS used a different tab style component and behaviour, along with a mixture of utilising the bottom navigation to help users explore perks.
I also looked at creating a ‘featured’ page which users landed on when opening up the app – this allowed us to keep our premium ecosystem.
Key challenges:
Inaccessible navigation banner
Challenge
A lot of work needed to be considered around the top banner of the site and hittable areas between buttons as these would fail WCAG standards.
They were small buttons with not a lot of room for error, users would often click one button, and realise that they’d accidentally pressed the other button directly next to it.
Solution
By researching extensively into behavioural patterns; Android and iOS both have methods in which can easily solve the inaccessible top banner problem we currently had.
I created multiple options to and got these reviewed by the team, we all agreed on a preferred approach that we thought felt familiar so we didn’t alienate our users.
Goals
Create a lean experience for users
Creating a lean experience can only be a good thing when making an app intuitive and easy to use. The less steps to potentially cause confusion then better.
Make the app familiar to what they would expect to see
If a user uses an Apple device and uses their device a specific way, they would expect the same behavioural patterns when using the iOS UNiDAYS app, the same for Android – we want to make the app feel familiar and not alienate users by adding functionality into the app that they might not recognise based on their opperating system.
Research:
Site map
The very first area I worked on was the site map for the app, creating all the hit points and areas that users will be able to navigate to and use.
This covered the top navigation and the footer for the app.
Creating a site map helped me to get an overview of the key user routes that would need to be taken by the user whilst navigating the app.
Research:
Focus groups
We thought it would be a great idea to organise a focus group between staff across other departments of the company to try and get extra ideas that we could put towards the creation of the app, as well as to see if there was any consistent issues that we needed to avoid or improve with the current dynamic website that we had.
Having lots of people testing the app at the same time, allowed us to pin point any pain areas during the set tasks we set for the users.
Research:
A/B testing
This allowed us to test specific sections of the app and keep an eye on the behavioural patterns of our users when they landed on the relevant pages.
Doing this gave clear results for which design we should use as one would work better than the other. If that was the case, we then phased out ‘Design B’ completely.
Wireframes:
Login screen
Upon logging in, users are taken to the homepage.
This is where the main brands pay for exposure, as well as limited-time offers
Wireframes:
Explore
Perks were in groups of type, so users could swipe between the pages to see the other areas.
This area was one of the main differences in native UX between Android and iOS. Android interface uses swiping and the Hamburger navigation to get between pages, whereas the iOS interface uses main sections along the bottom navigation.
Wireframes:
Search
Searching within the Android app was done by hitting the floating action button at the bottom right of the screen. Doing this opened up a new page where it showed previous search results.
iOS and Android apps
UNiDAYS is a popular student discount platform with a native mobile app available on iOS and Android. The app’s design emphasises simplicity, speed, and accessibility, targeting Gen-Z and millennial students who need quick access to deals from brands like Apple, ASOS, and Levi’s.
My role
The challenge was to create a native iOS and Android application to replace the current dynamic website that was being used.
The outcome had to use the latest native UX best practices and expected user behavioural patterns as to not alienate users. As well as this, the app needed to be as lean as possible.
Key challenges:
Slick functionality without compromising premium screen estate
Challenge
The way the UNiDAYS website worked was that businesses would pay a premium fee to have their card placed higher up the website than the other businesses.
This new app, needed to feel familiar yet not compromise the current ecosystem that had been set up previously.
Solution
I researched fully into each opperating systems ‘style’ of how UNiDAYS could integrate the ecosystem that we have created.
Android used tabbing (swiping) to navigate through the categories of perks, whilst iOS used a different tab style component and behaviour, along with a mixture of utilising the bottom navigation to help users explore perks.
I also looked at creating a ‘featured’ page which users landed on when opening up the app – this allowed us to keep our premium ecosystem.
Key challenges:
Inaccessible navigation banner
Challenge
A lot of work needed to be considered around the top banner of the site and hittable areas between buttons as these would fail WCAG standards.
They were small buttons with not a lot of room for error, users would often click one button, and realise that they’d accidentally pressed the other button directly next to it.
Solution
By researching extensively into behavioural patterns; Android and iOS both have methods in which can easily solve the inaccessible top banner problem we currently had.
I created multiple options to and got these reviewed by the team, we all agreed on a preferred approach that we thought felt familiar so we didn’t alienate our users.
Goals
Create a lean experience for users
Creating a lean experience can only be a good thing when making an app intuitive and easy to use. The less steps to potentially cause confusion then better.
Make the app familiar to what they would expect to see
If a user uses an Apple device and uses their device a specific way, they would expect the same behavioural patterns when using the iOS UNiDAYS app, the same for Android – we want to make the app feel familiar and not alienate users by adding functionality into the app that they might not recognise based on their opperating system.
Research:
Site map
The very first area I worked on was the site map for the app, creating all the hit points and areas that users will be able to navigate to and use.
This covered the top navigation and the footer for the app.
Creating a site map helped me to get an overview of the key user routes that would need to be taken by the user whilst navigating the app.
Research:
Focus groups
We thought it would be a great idea to organise a focus group between staff across other departments of the company to try and get extra ideas that we could put towards the creation of the app, as well as to see if there was any consistent issues that we needed to avoid or improve with the current dynamic website that we had.
Having lots of people testing the app at the same time, allowed us to pin point any pain areas during the set tasks we set for the users.
Research:
A/B testing
This allowed us to test specific sections of the app and keep an eye on the behavioural patterns of our users when they landed on the relevant pages.
Doing this gave clear results for which design we should use as one would work better than the other. If that was the case, we then phased out ‘Design B’ completely.
Wireframes:
Login screen
Upon logging in, users are taken to the homepage.
This is where the main brands pay for exposure, as well as limited-time offers
Wireframes:
Explore
Perks were in groups of type, so users could swipe between the pages to see the other areas.
This area was one of the main differences in native UX between Android and iOS. Android interface uses swiping and the Hamburger navigation to get between pages, whereas the iOS interface uses main sections along the bottom navigation.
Wireframes:
Search
Searching within the Android app was done by hitting the floating action button at the bottom right of the screen. Doing this opened up a new page where it showed previous search results.