Stiktu app
Stiktu is and Augmented Reality app with a strong social media context. The app allows users to sitck overlays on top of photos taken from their smartphones, once made public any Stiktu user can see the overlayed content in AR when scanning the base image with their phones.
Stiktu saw it latest update (2.1) on November 2012 and will be soon discontinued. This concepts illustrate a redesign aiming to solve some usability issues, integrating better in the Android ecosystem and adding new social features like the possibility to create private content to be discovered only by certain users.
It's all about the community
Stiktu is all about discovering content and contributing, getting inspired by the community is the best way to learn about what to do with the app. Hence giving the highest priority to the content is key.
Before even creating an account the first screen displays the most popular content as a motivator to sign up. Content is arranged in a continous feed without clipping the thumbnails preserving the original aspect ratios making it feel more organic.
The sign in options are reduced to a single button and the banner is tappable containing a tutorial, an animation invites the user to tap on it and discover what Stiktu is about.
Don't let navigation interfere with the experience
In 2.1 the general navigation takes too much real estate where not required, it also adds cognitive overload when it cohabitates with contextual navigation patterns as content tabs and makes the main action (Scan) less visible. Not to mention that 2.1's tabbed design doesn't follow neither iOS nor Android guidelines.
Keeping the global navigation under a navigation drawer cleans the UI and adds scalability to future versions of the app. The action bar in Android makes clear which is the app's main action.
Leverage gestures were expected
The discovery screen is a continuous feed of content created by the Stiktu community, following Android guidelines for tab navigation, the user can now swipe to change the list view. The tabs have been also moves to the top to avoid conflict with the phone's navigation controls.
The feed continuously loads and displays content while scrolling. Since a user can basically publish any image the feed keeps the aspect ratio instead of clipping the thumbnails to better illustrate the diversity of content and make the live feed feel 'alive'.
Tapping on a thumbnail opens it in full view but the user can still browse through the list by scrolling up and down.
Stickers as Stiktu's signature content
Stickers have become very popular among the Stiktu community, in 3.0 stickers get more relevance with the introduction of audio stickers.
In the editor screen a sticker menu is created, treating an image as a sicker more, removing redundancy.
Geolocated posts
Stiktu promotes is the discovery of content, each post displays how many users have found that image, and as a side effect some users create their own "treasure hunt", adding geolocation opens the door to a more playful experience, sort of AR meets geocaching.
Private posts for your significant others
Stiktu 3.0 introduces private posts, now a user can decide if she wants to make her post public or visible only to certain users.
At publication time the user is addressed to include a personal message including hints on where to find the image and uncover the hidden message.
