A timeline of a Mobile UI I created. I learned a lot.

I posted in Design critiques, but I also figured I wanted to show you guys my design process.

I coded and designed an app this past summer and I've gone though SERIOUS design phases.

I'm for all intents and purposed an amateur. I always loved graphic designs and I frequently made 'signatures' you would see at the bottom of some forum posts for users.

This was my first iteration. http://ift.tt/1QR2F7H I was really excited about this because I loved the color scheme. I was trying to be as 'flat' as possible, but I soon came to realize that it was too dark, and a lot of people would be turned off by it. There were a multitude of other problems I felt, and so I scrapped it.

My second iteration was lighter, and I was pretty happy with it. http://ift.tt/1jGfFCF There were a MULTITUDE of changes made, and I spent weeks trying to perfect it. This was the 2.0 release and people seemed to like it. I was especially proud of the 'Thought's' button because I made it seems as though you were actually pressing down a physical button. I added 'cards' for the posts and in general I was satisfied. This didn't last long.

My third iteration came from me wanting to get a different shade and tried to simplify the design a bit more. http://ift.tt/1QR2DwC I trashed the 'thought's' button because it felt cluttered and unnecessary. At this stage I included a swipe gesture within the app to replace it along with a physical button on the top. This is the current version in the app store.

I looked at it and my competition and as my users increased, a few new users complained that the competition looked sleeker and felt snappier. I threw mostly everything about the earlier designs away and started again.

http://ift.tt/1jGgwDB

I got rid of the excess space in the tabbar, found some much nicer and sleeker icons and cleaned up the cards. I think that FINALLY, I'm at a place where I'll stay happy.

Throughout this whole process I learned so much about finite aspects of graphic design and feel pretty good.

Thanks for reading all of this and to all of your amateurs out there, never give up on your designs! Keep working at them and making them that much better.

This is the current design I'm working on and planning to release within the week.

Great design resource

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) Submitted October 03, 2015 at 09:49PM by DRBlast http://ift.tt/1jGgueY