Reddit is known for not having the most visually appealing website. I took this opportunity to redesign their website, incorporating modern UI design trends to bring their website to the 21st century.
P.S Reddit's current design has not been changed dramatically for nearly 13 years (ever since it launched to the public).
Let's Research Shall We?
As you can see, most users could accomplish the basic tasks of a forum website, but when it came to interacting with more 'advanced' options they either needed assistance or couldn't complete the task at all.
Que The Design Phase!
I used inspiration from Slack's interface and Blizzards Battle.net interface. resulting in these early mid-fidelity wireframes.
Lets add some colour to these plain interfaces and give it some life.
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I decided to choose a dark navy blue, complimented with hints of red, while having a neutral background of white, because this colour palette is soft on eyes, since readers will be scrolling through for hours (at least that's what I do?).
Now doesn't that seem a bit better?
Before ya"ll say anything, heres a customized Subreddit page. This design will allow for owners to trick out their sub-forums any way they like, while still allowing users to easily navigate their way through the web page.
Creating an entire web layout from scratch was a difficult process. Not only was I creating a simple interaction with new-users, those interactions couldn't stray far away from usual interactions long-time users were familiar with.
If I had the chance to do this project differently, I would do more user research with frequent Reddit users. What UI features would they want fixed? Do they still find it hard to use Reddit's website? Did they have a hard onboarding experience with Reddit?
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Thanks for Reading!
Check out the full case study here: https://www.thekeendesigns.com/reddit/
