One of my most challenging projects.
The client's request: “Build me a web app that will unify and categorize all cloud files.” Only an idea. No features, no plans.
So I knew that I should start writing, not designing.
First thing - I've drafted the product goals, the use cases, and the H cases, to create a clear picture of the product and to set the client's expectations.
After several meetings and Skype calls, we agreed on the minimum viable product (MVP), and I got the go-ahead to start building.
I always get a project off the ground by preparing the wireframes for the product's main pages. I make sure the clients know the wireframes are just for structure and flow. This way, they're informed that the wireframes colors, fonts, dividers are intermediate elements of the website.
Design mode
After the stakeholders approved the wires, it was time for the design part. With little to no time to make more design iterations, I had to present what I had, right from the oven.
We decided to go for a bolder approach, using a gradient instead of a plain color, like most of the cloud hosting companies opt for. The homepage structure also went through modifications along the way, due to our approaches being submitted to user testing.
List page
The central challenge on the list page was to display all the interactions that the user has with a file.
I'm not a big fan of hidden menus. But after conducting user studies, we discovered that on this particular interaction, the bullet menu is a popular pattern among our user
Another plus was that this way, we weren't crowding the page with lots of decisions and actions for the users to make.
