Chumly – Social Media Aggregator mockup

Here are a few example screens of an overhauled UI for a social media aggregator.  The original interface had a lot of “mystery meat” navigation and was very confusing, even for more advanced users. I tried to make something that was still “clean” but much more intuitive. I worked with ideas like information hierarchy, progressive disclosure and discovery, and in-context help for more complicated sections.

Many of the features I proposed eventually ended up becoming common on other sites, such as direct drag-and-drop file uploads, live username detection and tagging as you type, etc. I even wrote a proof of concept realtime character count meter in JavaScript, and contextual animations in CSS to help assure users that their actions have been completed as expected. “Did my message post? Where did it go?” The compose window shrinks down and flies into the outbox icon to indicate that it was sent.