Our mobile team focused on matching web features without clear mobile strategy, based mainly on management requests rather than user data.The team spent months building features that went unused. We needed a plan to improve efficiency, reduce technical debt, and better serve users.
I saw a need for change. I started exploring how our mobile apps could provide unique value instead. I started by looking into user behavior in the app. My focus was on answering:
Sprout's mobile apps have two main navigation paths: "Stream Pages" and "Notification Center", both leading to "Detail Pages":
Stream Pages: Multiple pages accessed via primary navigation (e.g., Inbox, Tasks, Calendar)
Notification Center: A single page for notifications
Detail Pages: Accessed by tapping message cards or notifications
My product design manager and I conducted user interviews and analyzed feedback from productboard and gong calls. Key findings included:
We found several themes but some of the key findings were:
Users quickly check the mobile app for key information. It's mainly used to monitor system status and handle urgent tasks on-the-go.
Web and mobile notifications serve different purposes, requiring separate strategies.
The mobile notification center often overloads users with alerts. Adding more customization options could improve its effectiveness.
I prioritized simplifying notifications, I focused on:
Upgrading the Notification Center to a personalized page, enhancing experience by:
- Displaying relevant items based on user settings and role
- Including non-notification items of interest
- Using a "productivity" UI pattern
The home section provides:
- A comprehensive view of all messages and items for a selected group
- Versatile inline actions for various user intents
- "Social" UI design encouraging browsing and engagement
The early vision was put on hold due to Product's reluctance to deviate from 1:1 parity and collaborate with the Global team. They cited concerns about allocating time for a project requiring notifications to function without push notifications and sync with the web application.
However we did start in incremental areas start to update smaller navigational and notification updates that supported this vision. Some included:
After joining the web global team, I learned about the team's "Collaboration" initiative for centralized user updates. I presented the mobile vision and suggested merging the two allowing for us to revive the project with web team support.
With increased confidence in the vision's feasibility, it evolved beyond a simple notification upgrade to include:
As Staff Designer for Mobile and Global teams, I enhanced cross-team communication and proposed a future notifications concept to leadership. This led to prioritizing mobile and web notification sync in the Global zone. We're now coordinating mobile and web engineers to resolve sync issues and integrate all notifications into the global system.
The Mobile zone has begun rethinking our approach to larger features. Rather than pursuing one-to-one parity for MVP, we've adopted a notification-first strategy. This approach will save us considerable time. Additionally, we've undertaken smaller projects that contribute to our overall vision, including navigation updates, native system upgrades, and notification center improvements.
MSTQ is an experience design agency hired by Dais to design and pitch them an app for improving the logistics industry. Fleet owners face three main challenges: idle drivers without routes, too many routes without enough drivers, and one-way routes with empty return trips. They need a better way to manage inventory to maximize driver utilization, increase job capacity, and eliminate empty runs.
