THE CHALLENGE

The Eversify theme editor was designed by developers. The result was a set of default themes that weren't user-friendly, and lacked a modern look. My task was to design several new default themes, with a focus on highlighting images.

THE PROCESS

Armed with the old analog mockup software, pencil and paper, I met with the stakeholders to define the requirements and brainstorm for ideas. We looked at competitor apps, the limitations of the existing theme editor, and prioritized features and functions.

We identified the most important features as:

• More focus on images. The existing themes were driven mostly by text articles. We wanted a theme that put images front and center.
• More user-friendly navigation. The existing themes all had always-present section bars that occupied precious screen real estate that could better be used by content.
• Social media integration. The existing themes had no method for users to comment or share articles, driving new users to the publisher articles and apps.

In addition to the themes itself, we added three components to the theme editor, available for use in other themes: a new dynamic toolbar component, a slide-in navigation component, and a section bar that provided a list of articles for sections that the user could swipe through.

Eversify Reader Theme Version 1

This theme eliminated the separate section pages, altogether. Top articles with images appeared at the top, and the user could swipe through a number of the top articles, as defined by the publisher. Section tabs below listed all of the articles for a particular section. The user could change sections by tapping one of the section tabs, or by swiping the section area.

Eversify Reader Theme Version 2

This theme put an emphasis on social interactions, such as comments, while retaining separate section pages. Again, the focus was heavily on articles with images, but with a fixed number of front-page articles.

THE RESULT

For interactive editions, the mobile version of the theme instantly became the most-used theme for Eversify publishers. The dynamic toolbar component became the default navigation element for all other themes, and the old section drill down navigation became obsolete.