ltst.xyz 2022
Latest (ltst) is a programmable dashboard that can show any information provided by a webhook or API (bots).
Project brief
Role
Product Designer
Team size
3
Platform
Web
Time period
1 month
Context
I was brought onto this project by a friend who also initiated it. He already laid some ground work in terms of branding and product design before I joined. Together with me and another developer we formed a team to bring this web app from an alpha stage to a v1 / beta.
The app focuses on channels that can be created and configured to display any text or image-based information statically or automatically updated in a given time frame. These channels are either private or publish and can appear on the users personal dashboard if the channel is subscribed to.
My responsibilities were:
- Audit the existing UX to streamline existing flows and suggest improvements
- Provide functionality to see and manage profiles of users so channels can be shared
- Provide functionality to enable modularity for dashboards
UX Audit
When I joined I first did a UX audit of the app to suggest improvements on user experience and interface. Following the audit it became clear that the navigation and information architecture needed improvements – especially around managing and editing channels.
Therefore I introduced the following changes / additions:
- Back button / pseudo breadcrumb to provide a sense of orientation to the user in the channel management flow
- Tabs to differentiate between Updates, Webhooks and Bots while managing a channel
- “Manage” button to make channel management more accessible from the overview
Profiles
One of the main requirements for v1 was the ability to see profiles of other users with all their public channels in one place. Prior that users didn’t own themselves existed without any note on the creator. In order to make the product more social, profiles should give a better sense of community and ownership. To achieve this in a basic form I designed:
- A view for profiles of other users
- A view for your personal profile replacing the “Manage channels” page
- A modified sign up flow including a username
- Modified screens where public channels appear to also reflect the username of the creator
Modular dashboards
The other epic to achieve for v1 and to effectively ship the app in a beta stage was the ability to customize the users dashboard according to their needs and wishes. Prior to that the dashboard was a single-width scroll with no customization possible except for changing the order of channels displayed.
Due to the very different nature of channels this came with a few design challenges. In order to achieve modularity and given the small number of people involved I decided to only allow two different widths on the dashboard for v1 which already led to a lot more flexibility for users. Each channel on the dashboard would receive a dropdown to select whether it should be displayed in full width or half the size.
Further steps
After around a month and active development the project came to halt. Some of the designs showed above didn’t make it into the app until now. While a good amount of the work done can be seen on ltst.xyz, it is uncertain if the development will continue in the future.