Case Study: Saily App. Designing UI

In one of our previous case studies, we told you about a logo that Tubik Studio designed for Saily App. To continue this bright design story, today we are going to get you some backstage of UI redesign for the Saily App.

Task

Redesign of UI for the mobile application for local user-to-user e-commerce.

Tools

Sketch, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Illustrator

Process

User Interface

To remind those who have missed our previous case study, Saily is a local community app allowing neighbors to buy and sell their used stuff. Although it is a sort of e-commerce app, it includes a strong feature of communication between users. One of the essential accents brought out by the Saily App team puts a deep focus on design and culture at the core of everything they do. User interface redesign of the app, accomplished by Tubik Studio designer Tamara, according to the client’s vision of the product needed to have a fun and entertaining feel and look. Bearing it in mind and setting the task to make the product trendy, clear, and easy-to-use, the designer created the new image for the Saily App, which presented a new visual concept and featured new functional points the clients wanted to add to the user experience.

Tubik Studio designer working on Saily App screens

In the process of research and analysis of the existing general concept of layout and transitions, the designer concentrated on UI solution which put bright accents at the most important features and provided fast and easy microinteractions. E-commerce is the process that a user needs to feel as clear and fast; in addition, the features should be informative and easily recognizable for quite a diverse target audience.

So, UI design points that must be thought out were the following:

• easily understandable layout and navigation
• recognizable icons
• graphic elements not creating an unnecessary distraction from the main points
• the process of inputting the data about the item, as simple and user-friendly as possible
• interface elements showing data about the item not looking overloaded but containing all the necessary information
• efficient communication available from any point of the application
• funny and entertaining graphic elements, all harmoniously supporting the same style concept and preferably original to create additional recognizability for the app.

The general stylistic concept, which was chosen to support the idea of a funny and uptown interface which should at the same time be informative and useful, moved around the light background and a lot of bright accents in navigation and notification elements of the interface. As it’s easy to see from the grand list above, due to this decision, the screens get a lot of air, and light background promotes good readability, which is essential in the case of an e-commerce app. Moreover, a light background gives an efficient field of presentation for any kind of item brought out to sales.

The search followed two directions: the search of the actual items and the search along with the requests that were made by other users. In requests, users left the information about the desired item. Also, the user could save the history of their own requests. Requests made by users gave the additional channel of easy matching sellers and buyers, letting them know what is actually on-demand at the time. Moreover, requests could be filtered by location, making the process of matching the buyer and the desired item even more efficient. The search field was hidden in the process of reviewing the content so as not to distract the user and open more space.

One of the decisions made to add some interesting visual features was the color highlighting of the content photos to make them look interesting and attract the user’s attention. Colors were used to visually support navigation via color-coding, creating conventions and increasing the level of usability. Categories in the navigation were represented with background photos and original icons.

All the icons for the app were unique and customized so that they could create harmony of visual perception with all the other graphic elements and, at the same time, add to the general originality of the visual design of the screens.

The tab bar includes the basic navigation elements enabling the user to activate feed, search, communication features, and add a new item or request.

All the items, as you can see, were organized along the cards. The card of the item showed all the necessary information about the thing for sale and enabled the potential buyer to connect with the seller at once. To visually present the item that users wanted to sell, they could upload and customize one to four photos, which the user could add from his/her own device gallery or take a photo right out of the app screen. The sharing function was transferred to a separate screen so as not to overload the card.

One more functional side of the application to mention is the features of chatting and planning. As the app is positioned as a highly social, simple and usable chatting feature was seen among the essentials and organized along the standard and common scheme of native chats without too much experimenting so that even the users without the frequent experience of communication via digital channels could feel comfortable with this chat.

Planning functionality was realized via “meetings” feature, which enabled a user to fix the time and day of meeting with the seller/buyer in the app calendar and see this information at the card of the item. In the “meetings” mode, the image of the item got smaller and moved to the field of the item description, while the bigger image featured the image of the meeting place and data.

So, the user’s feed could switch to three different modes and show the chats, meetings, and requests. In the own card of an item, the seller could also change the different status of the item to inform the users who could potentially get interested in it. Also, the application enabled the user to add some items to favorites so as not to lose their trace in the great bulk of items.

The user’s profile showed basic information like name, location, followers/following and also activation of the chatting function as one of the basics. The preview of the item card included the photo, the main description with the category color code, the price, and ability to add it to favorites right from the preview.

All UI solutions obtained via numerous discussions and iterations turned around the high level of usability and efficiency, which should be supported with all the visual elements available on the screen.

Illustrations

In the previous case study, we mentioned the Saily brand mascot, which is a funny little ghost having its own legend. The logo created for the brand by Tubik Studio designer Arthur Avakyan was just the start of the branding process, which continued with the next step of branding in UI design.

The mascot, as well as the other funny and user-friendly characters, were used in numerous funny illustrations, which presenting a sort of entertaining element, at the same time, became the tool of informing the user about the issues or problems demanding attention.

Also, the team of UI designer Tamara, illustrator Arthur, and motion designer Kirill created several animations that livened up the screens, supported a general cool style, and at the same time had the functions of informing the user about the state of processes such as pull-to-refresh animations or loaders.

Enable location animated screen

Enable notification animated screen

Pull down to refresh animation

Search Screen Animation

So, the Saily App project became a great and bright challenge for designers to make a trendy, funny, and attractive but highly efficient and informative application with a user interface aimed at a wide and diverse target audience and having a strong element of socialization.

Recommended Reading

If you are interested in seeing more practical case studies with creative flows for UI/UX design, here is a set of them.

Slumber. Mobile UI Design for Healthy Sleeping
Letter Bounce. UI Design for Mobile Game
Real Racing. UX and UI Design for Mobile Game
Manuva. UI/UX Design for Gym Fitness App
Cuteen. UI/UX Design for Mobile Photo Editor
Tasty Burger.UI Design for Food Ordering App
Home Budget App. UI for Finance
Upper App. UI Design for To-Do List
Health Care App. UI for Doctors
Toonie Alarm. Mobile App UI Design

Originally written for Tubik Blog

Welcome to read a case study on Saily Logo Design