FlipBoard Redesign

Kristi Gordon
2 min readMay 15, 2017

Flipboard uses adaptive media formats such as RSS technology to provide up to date news and other categories of interest to subscribers. The app has some great features, as well as some usability issues. After conducting extensive user research, a new design was created for tablet and mobile in the form of prototypes and design document.

Tablet redesign focuses on adding an editing tool that would allow members to customize their Flipboard homepage, making it more unique and distinguishable at a glance.

Adding the ability to add background images, change typeface, and color scheme, and add to the experience. This feature can also be important for branding purposes, the design document is viewable as well as the prototype, created on Adobe xd.

Mobile Redesign

Flipboard was also assessed for mobile use, and various navigation issues were discovered: one, in particular, involves the absence of a simple tool called a scrollbar. By simply adding a scrollbar to the mobile design, subscribers are able to view how far into a magazine they are, and how much further they have to go to reach the end of the content.

This mobile design is also viewable on the design document, and xd prototype can be viewed as well. Mobile Prototype.

Design Process

The process for assessing the Flipboard app started with user testing, creating an account, thorough testing of member setting, features, and any differences cross platform. The app was assessed on android, kindle, and ios systems, before any redesign work began. App pros and cons were noted and documented, and sketching for the redesign ideas began. Digital prototyping was done to test how the redesign ideas might be implemented. Both redesign processes have been document and prototype.

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