Douban APP experience report

It has been nearly 11 years since Abei founded Douban. Douban started as a niche website for exchanges of movies, books and audios, and now it has developed into a hobby-based exchange with over 100 million views per day. Sharing community and knowledge sharing platform. In the more than a year since its release in early August 2014, Douban APP has undergone three major version updates. The focuses of the updates vary, and it is already a relatively mature version. The design of Douban APP on iPhone, iPad, and Android is exactly the same, which will not increase the cost for users to change devices (actually, they are too lazy to adapt each one~). Next, I will analyze and study the Douban APP based on iOS at various levels, and explore the design of Douban in terms of functions, interactions, appearance, etc.

Basic experience information:

Operating system: iOS 9.3

APP version: Douban 3.7.0

Device: iPhone 5s

Date: April 16, 2016

Positioning:

User characteristics:

User needs:

Strategy Goal:

Business model:

Douban uses basic video, book and audio information to attract and gather people with various preferences, and then refines users with different preferences through different item types. Differentiate them to form interest groups. Users can communicate within the group and generate social attributes. Douban with social attributes will further promote users’ content creation, and user-created content will increase users’ fragmented browsing time. and use sticky. Douban needs to accumulate content and users through this virtuous cycle to achieve strategic goals.

3.1 Viewing/Marking/Commenting on Movies and Books

The eternal source of attraction and content generation of Douban is Douban as a tool for viewing/marking/commenting on movies and books. Douban’s basic attraction to users. However, the update speed of tool video, book and audio content is slow, making it difficult for users to maintain continuity in their usage time.

3.2 Diary

One of the main content creation methods for Douban users is a blog-style function that users can create and read

Users can create content in fragments Douban is the focus of time reading and increasing user stickiness. The single editing convenience is very simple. Users can only use the default fonts. Adding pictures is the only other function. This form of simplification allows users to focus on text content, which can be said to be Douban's insistence on content. However, for a Douban that increasingly focuses on this, it seems to be increasingly stretched.

3.3 Today’s Selection

It is a selection from all content on Douban (including trivial matters/group topics, long article comments, photography, reading columns, radio, etc.). The main content is According to the set interests, there will also be some articles pushed outside the interests. About 35 articles are updated every day. The content is biased towards literature and art to meet the reading needs of users.

3.4 Trivia and Popular Trivia Topics

Trivia is a relatively new feature. Users have different opinions on the emergence of trivia and the important position it suddenly occupies. Trivia is in some forms The function is similar to a group, and the inner atmosphere is more similar to instant chat. It is a very fragmented and life-oriented communication community. It attracts users to browse interesting topics and discover interests in boring fragmented time. The main purpose is to promote communication between users and people they know or don't know who have the same hobbies. There are not many small things that we can add to the "Discovery" under "Little Things", but in fact, the topic of small things will be automatically generated in the communication of each work/activity. Therefore, small things naturally exist for each item. This is one of the differences between small things and groups. Through Douban's emphasis on small things, we can see that Douban is eager to try to combine its tool attributes and social attributes.

3.5 Groups

As one of the representative functions of Douban, groups are a long-standing function on Douban. It is a communication community developed to solve the needs of discussion between cross-douban items. , users establish groups based on topic interests, gathering users with the same interests to communicate and discuss together, and discover more interesting content.

There are some functional overlaps between groups and trivial matters. Through the comparison in the table below, you can understand the difference between the two.

3.6 Broadcast

Broadcast is a Weibo-like function of Douban, which allows you to view the updates of the users you follow in chronological order. It is an important way of communication between familiar users.

3.7 Chat

Users can initiate chats through private messages, and can send text/expressions/pictures to communicate. You can also create your own group chat based on your interests. There is also a default group chat discussion under each work entry. Users can browse previous discussions and express their opinions immediately.

Douban is now a very large and comprehensive application. Due to its own business and development needs, it has made some attempts in various directions in social functions such as communication and discussion based on interests. There are even overlaps.

As a result, its functions feel confusing and complicated, adding some pressure to the user's cognition.

In this version of Douban, the "Yingshuyin" is placed in the center of the TAB BAR. The "Homepage" and "Little Things" on the left provide long content and short information respectively based on interests. The creators of the content are basically strangers. People, "Circle" and "My" on the right provide functions surrounding the user, including group/broadcast/chat/diary/mark information, etc.

The overall structure of Douban is consistent, usually the top banner/cover/title information, followed by category tags (videos, books and audio can be slid to switch, trivia/groups, etc. cannot be slid to switch), and then Detailed entry information under each label. Next, we will roughly select a few typical pages to discuss.

5.1 Home Page and Video Books and Audio

The home page search box is the search entrance for all content on Douban. It contains the most commonly used video and audio tool attributes and is located in a prominent position at the top of the home page. The function of the video, book and audio page is to provide popular recommendations for video, book and audio, while its search function is not that prominent.

The homepage is mainly centered on the banner/column buttons/content below, which is roughly consistent with the logic of video, book and audio, and the page structure is simple and clear.

5.2 Small things and groups

Through the above discussion, we can think that small things and small groups are generally similar, and they are different in some definitions and scopes. Let’s take a look at the following two the difference in interface structure.

The trivial things added to the trivial things page will display 6 on each page. If more are added, they will be hidden on the next page. If more than 11 are added, they will be collapsed into one "all trivial things" inside. Since there are small things in a single work entry, and users must join them to participate in the discussion, and each user may be interested in a large number of small things, such a design is not conducive for users to return to the topics they have joined to continue participating in the discussion. . The lower part of the trivia page is "Popular Trivia Topics". The main content is recommendations for trivial things that are more interesting and interesting to users. It is updated 2-3 times every hour. (Small problem: "Popular trivia topics" and "Today's Featured" on the homepage are placed differently)

For the "Latest Topics" tab in a group, you can view each group without entering each group. All new topics in the topic are a relatively good feature. Popular content will automatically appear at the forefront of topics.

The page displayed after entering a small matter/group is roughly as follows:

The internal interface settings of small things and groups are similar, but the meanings of each label are very different. Groups usually only It contains 3 tags: "Topic", "Group Chat" and "Recommendation". The tags of trivial things classify topics, and different tags are topics in different categories of trivial things. Pages between trivial matters and groups cannot be switched by sliding. You can only click on the top tab, which increases the difficulty for users to switch.

5.3 Work/activity details page

Movie/music/book/event/TV details pages all adopt the same layout. The cover occupies the largest area of ??the page, and there is A quick access to information such as name/information/tags/pictures/comments. Let’s talk about the function settings of Quick Track. The functions here on the movie page are mainly movie trailers (sometimes including online playback sources), while books are for e-book/paper book purchase. It should be a function similar to the movie ticket purchase function, but the experience between the two is different.

Douban is used a lot in pictures/covers. The overall structure is very simple, the experience is relatively unified, and the use of colors is cautious and restrained. The main colors used are bright green, and some with lower saturation and higher brightness. Use auxiliary colors to create a clear, natural, simple and elegant atmosphere.

7.1 Changes to the Filmmaker Page

When we view a filmmaker of interest, what we want to see is:

The current Douban Movie On the filmmaker page, the filmmaker's works are arranged in the form of cards from high to low according to the rating. There is no other sorting method. In this case, it is difficult for us to see the two points 2/3. We can only sort according to the rating. It is estimated to be the representative work of this filmmaker. So it is necessary to add filtering and sorting.

7.2 List of small things on the small things page

Users have a relatively high demand for the number of small things lists, but for the small things added to the small things page, only 6 basic items can be displayed on each page ( Even on the iPad, there are only 6 Douban trivia lists, which are long and white), and the page looks very rigid and serious, which is a bit incompatible with the light and lively function of trivia.

7.3 Diary Editing

Douban’s diary and comment editor uses more functions. Douban Diary also considers the development of personal blogs and provides a more powerful format for editing. Device is needed.

Douban is a sentimental product. Someone once said, "Douban is a website that everyone hopes will grow and make money." In recent years, Douban has made many attempts in various directions and has gone away. There are many detours. I hope Douban can stick to its "slowness" in the future, try innovations, and adapt to the "fastness" of the Internet.

I started preparing it on 4/16 (which happens to be the 6th anniversary of registering on Douban^^). I spent two days writing in front of the computer this weekend (4/24) and finally finished it. As a first-time UX learner, I am somewhat unable to analyze apps like Douban. Many places still feel vague and vague, and some analyzes are only superficial. I hope that all the masters will give me your advice. Thank you.