Components
NewsBlur app is an RSS Feed app that provides curated content and customizable content that allows a user to easily stay updated with latest stories, news, trends. It also allows users to be able to follow their favourite blogs by making use of the blogs' RSS Feeds. After downloading and opening the app, the user is taken to the registration page. However, user has to fill in the registration details such as e-mail, password and the likes which takes a bit of time. Also, when using the app, there is no way for someone to create folders when it's needed. For example, if I want to create an entertainment folder where entertainments feeds will all be in, there is no way to do this. If this feature actually exist in the app currently, it is very difficult for a user to get to it i.e. create the needed folders. One final thing missing is the lack of ability to select where to save downloaded articles. This is very important as one might not want to save on the phone/internal storage because of lack of space and might decide to save in the external storage. Currently, this isn't possible to do on the NewsBlur app.
Proposal
Creation of folders should be added to the settings of the main homepage of the app for easy user access. Another way is to add the create folder/category button to the plus menu at the lower left side of the app home. To make registration easy for users on the site, Facebook or Gmail login should be implemented in the app as many users do use Facebook or Gmail and this in turn will make registration super easy and quick for users. Users should be provided the option to save to local storage or external storage in the app. Mockup will be provided below to show how the features can be implemented.
Mockups / Examples
When users want to register in order to use the app, they are taken to this registration page
My suggestion is for Facebook and Google login to be implemented on this page as shown below.
When user is logged in, he or she is brought to the following page
For the inclusion of the create folder/category in the app, the screenshot below shows how this can be done.
- Inclusion in the settings page
- It can be added to the plus button as show below such that when the plus button is clicked, it will bring out this two options
Then when the user clicks add search term or url, it will take them to this page
Benefits
Having the create folder/category button in the menu will allow users to be able to have different categories for different feeds they have which will assist in sorting and ordering according to how the user wants it. So users can have fashion, entertainment, news categories and so on which will contain stories related to each categories. The Facebook or Gmail login will grant users faster login process to the NewsBlur app and stress free process of having to enter e-mails or creating passwords. Providing users with more selections during the saving of downloaded articles will give users more free will in making choices and utilizing resources according to their phone.
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors