While interviewing with Piazza, I was assigned a desing challenge of redesining their current iOS app. I felt that the iOS app was essentially a carbon copy of the web app. I felt that the iOS app needed to accomodate more for mobile use rather than a general use, and that is where a lot of my design decisions came from.
Current design of the iOS App
Lo-fidelity wireframes of new design
The most frequent needs of a user on the go are the ability to see announcements, contact information, and course information. Users are going to glance at the app when they are not at their computer and they need to check something, whether that would be where the class is, what the professor's email is, or to see whether class has been canceled or not. Currently, there is no way to access instructor information. If a student wanted to send a quick email to an instructor, it is imperative that they have quick and easy access rather than having to dig through email or search on the Internet. There also isn't a way to filter the feed based on posts. Maybe there was a snow storm and you're wondering if class has been canceled. You don't want to have to scroll through all these questions about the homework and would rather see the announcements made by the instructor. I changed the navigational elements to address these immediate needs and instead of a stage left navigation, I thought a navigation bar at the bottom of the screen would be better use of screen real estate, rather than potentially half of another thread. All in all, this was a fun exercise, since this is a product I use and being able to think of a potential redesign is always valuable experience.
High-fidelity mockups of potential new design
