Sprout's native mobile apps message cards needed a complete redesign due to several issues:
Create a seamless experience that is both easy to maintain and simple for our users
Looking into how the message cells are built, and all of the different ways we currently pull information. Focusing in on pain points our engineers face.
Along with looking into all the ways the cells are built. I talk took an audit and sorted out mobile Social cards and their different subject matters. Finding that while each one has their own unique message type. They all look the same making it difficult for scanning.
Looking at web there were many parity issues between the platforms. I started to log most of the difference calling out if they are treated differently or missing completely.
I also did an audit of all of the social networks Sprout connected to, and ones it didn't connect to. To see how that could help with the inspiration for the message cards. The idea was never to duplicate what each network looked like. That would create more inconsistencies. But to see what content we need to design for now and will need to design for in the future for better scalability.
Instead of focusing on each message type based on network and by feature like product intended to focus on, we have a more unified subsystem approach to message cells.Similar to how they were built, but with greater flexibility so the pieces could be used more holistically in any message cell, as well as notifications and detail pages.
After some time working on this project. The web design system team also started to work on redesigning there message cards. So I worked closely with them collaborating on new ideas.
One thing I helped out web with was they were introducing a new side panel layout. With that layout they needed to start thinking about how to design at a smaller size and utilize indicators. That is where I showed them the indicator bar component.
