How can India’s leading social gaming network provide a better experience to it’s users?
Ibibo, for those who do not know is a leading social network in India. While their product strategy speaks about itself, the same cannot be said of the user experience of the website. Throughout the process I was taking inputs from people I knew in the company and who were aware of the business objectives and strategy of the company. Hence, the redesign is bound by practical constraints like existing branding, product strategy and priorities of the company. My first step was an attempt to understand the kind of user base it enjoys. It is to be noted that the users of this site would not be tech savvy geeks but the masses who in India still go to cyber cafe’ for access to the web. This was a major focus throughout the design to make the site as simple as possible for a non-tech-savvy-user. However, that also meant that there would be redundancy needed in terms of site navigation and the ways to get things done. Let the user make discoveries depending on his browsing pattern and ensure that most common behaviors end up exploring all the services that the site offers. It is for that reason that you see links to the popular services in various navigational elements including the dashboard (orange) where the user can use the tabs to make an appropriate action like searching (live search) for a game or choosing to write a status in the Blurbs or just using their free SMS service to send messages right from the dashboard.
My first task was to prioritize the plethora of services into a reasonably possible number so that the list does not seem intimidating and also does not put some services completely behind the scenes. I made the list of the services and then chose those that were directly related to the needs of the user. Following is a screenshot of the same in the ideation phase.
This was followed by the search for a layout that would ideally streamline the process of looking out what game to play or updating the status and anything else the user is most likely to do. Following wireframes are devoted to that phase of design. The final wireframe resembles the finished output to some extent. However there are a few changes which were incorporated in the visual design phase to incorporate their business objectives. Some of these are the Become Popular button, notifications of new mails and updates, the popular games showcased in the dashboard which despite increasing it’s size were important for them. The advertisements are an important part of their revenue generation beside micro-payments which occur via the games. It might appear that the news feed is getting less of importance and most of it is below the hypothetical fold (one of the biggest fad of the web) but they want the user to look at the feed to play the games their friends are playing. At any time they have 4-5 popular games which are the most popular ones and the dashboard incorporates them as a slider. Another feature of the design is that the lower half of the screen, which involves the tabbed navigation to the left would not really need whole page refreshes. So when a user clicks on the mail tab, the inbox would open in the lower half with the orange dashboard staying in place. Certain more subtle visual improvements have also been undertaken. I would urge you to visit Ibibo.com and then come back to see the final version below.
Note: Since this project was carried on a personal level, any usage of this design requires prior consent from the designer.
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