View for Behance

Designing an enriching and native Behance browsing experience on Windows Phone for lack of an official native app on the platform.

date_range

3 months

military_tech

Featured on Microsoft, Nokia, Gizmodo and many other internet media

TEAM

My Role

Designer

Developer

Marketer

Status

Sunset with 24k downloads & 4.5 user rating. Microsoft shut down the Windows Phone Store.

Context

Why did I start this project?

  • Used to browse Behance a lot while in college since I was working with my friends on a startup.



  • Two of us had Windows Phone.



  • Browsing Behance there was a slow and frustrating experience since there was no official app.



  • No good third party app in Windows Phone store.



  • I love making products and hence decided to build an app not just for me but also for other Behance users having a Windows Phone.

A few variations of page headers designed by different folks.

A slow and frustrating experience

😤

Problem

If I build this, why would someone use it?

  • There were other third party apps in WP store which weren’t that bad.



  • So, I questioned myself why would someone use my app over the present options.



  • I figured maybe I should look at the user reviews of such apps.



  • Most of the apps had complaints about tech issues such as the app not even loading.



  • I was looking to build a seamless Behance experience but did not want to add another brick in the wall. 



  • Came up with a few enhancements -

    • Shuffle - show random projects

    • Show popular fields

    • Quiky - saving work, profile, etc. at a single place.

Information architecture

  • Went through the API docs to check whether what I am looking for is even available or not.



  • Made a rough app flow diagram to get a sense of hierarchy and for later reference. It later came handy when developing the app.

A few variations of page headers designed by different folks.

Rough app flow diagram to get a sense of hierarchy

Early prototypes

Quick iterations and validation

  • Back then, I didn’t know that you could design mockups in Photoshop. I thought it is just a photo manipulation tool. 



  • I just opened Visual Studio and started developing initial prototypes from some rough sketches.



  • Built 3 prototypes.

A few variations of page headers designed by different folks.

Feedback - Too much information to digest.

A few variations of page headers designed by different folks.

Feedback - Much better but still a bit cluttered, kinda opposite to the Metro Design Language guideline of “Do more with less”.

The Final One

A few variations of page headers designed by different folks.

The third and the final prototype. I guess this is what they call complexion reduction.

Visual design

Identifying areas to stand out from the competition

  • Strongly felt that the visual design would be the key differentiator from competition since the rest of the content would almost be the same.



  • Followed the “Do more with less” principle of Metro Design Language (MDL).



  • This was the direct result of the feedback of the first 2 prototypes.



  • Reduced chrome to a great extent.



  • Right after the users launch the app, they get immersed in the content which consist of large thumbnails letting the content speak for itself.

A few variations of page headers designed by different folks.

Localization

Making the app accessible

In order to make the app more accessible to a local market, I enabled localisation in the app and supported 6 languages -

  1. English

  2. Portuguese

  3. Polish

  4. Indonesian

  5. German

  6. Romanian

Challenges

A series of challenges and overcoming them

  • Adobe pulled login support from Behance API when I was mid-way in the project.



  • Since the users couldn’t login what if they like a project and want to save it for future reference.



  • Similarly, they might want to save a creative profile, a work in progress or a collection.



  • I came up with a feature to tackle this problem. I called it - Quiky.



  • Quiky could let users save just about anything for later reference.

Impact

App got featured and mentioned in many internet media

  • The app has more than 24k downloads even though Behance is not used by a lot of folks and that too on a Windows Phone. It’s niche platform.

A few variations of page headers designed by different folks.

> 24k downloads

  • Number of downloads might not matter that much when it comes to express the quality of the product but the app has an average rating of 4.5 till date.

A few variations of page headers designed by different folks.

Average rating - 4.5/5

  • Users liked the design and performance of the app so much that internet media started featuring it. The app got featured on Gizmodo in This Week’s Best Android, iPhone, iPad, and Windows Phone Apps, Windows in 5 favourite new Windows Phone apps of the week, WindowsCentral and was placed in the spotlight section of the Windows Phone Store by Microsoft numerous times.



  • One of the users was so impressed that they created a new icon and promotional video for the app.

A few variations of page headers designed by different folks.

Some of the user reviews

Takeaways

A series of challenges and overcoming them

  • I kinda overdid the customisation at some places. Although users liked the overall app design, there were some users who got confused with the customised page layout and navigation.



  • It was not intentional though, it was because of my limited technical skills at the time.

  • To stand out, I introduced inconsistencies at some places e.g. I designed 2 different types of sharing menu for tap and hold interaction, one for projects and one for works in progress.

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Work In Progress.

Last updated on 14 Feb 2024

© 2016–2024

, Anagh Sharma.

Handcrafted with 🤍.