By Kristina Ochkina, Product Owner, the Collective Intelligence Platform.

Tomorrow we will release the new version of the iOS app with an updated feed, streamlining the process of reading and answering questions. In this post, I want to give you heads up and explain what’s new.

We heard your feedback. While our seasoned analysts got used to the previous design and were breezing through questions, new users often reported some difficulties.

Over the course of several months, our design team and I met with many of you to pinpoint the problems. Here is what we found.

The background images in question cards were making the text less legible. Also, the fonts were too tiny;

Users also said that when they were entering answers, the entry field actually hid the question itself;

The Useful Links section was not very visible. Many new users simply didn’t know that it existed at all!

Cindicator’s collective forecasts are based on answering questions, so it is crucial that this process is as frictionless as possible. We also wanted to add blocks with useful information to the feed and charts into the question cards. The existing structure of the app wasn’t built for that. Therefore, based on user requests and our own ideas for the app, we made the decision to overhaul the feed.

What’s new

Based on extensive user interviews, Marina Cherniavskaia, Design Team Leader at Cindicator, has created a new visual design aimed at maximum readability and ease of use.

The new layout simplifies the way questions are read. Question texts are now displayed on cards with a monochrome background. There is no more text on colourful images – now it’s all about ease of reading.

It’s now easier for you to find interesting questions. Now the key information is all right there on the question card: the question type, the name of the asset, and the maximum points you can get for an accurate forecast. You won’t need to click through to the question to see this information anymore.

The process of answering questions is simplified. Once you’re inside the question card you will no longer need to take any extra steps to check out useful links with charts and news. Everything is right there, just one click away. While answering the question, you can easily navigate the question card without any information obscuring the actual question.

Besides that, the application now works much faster as we rewrote it from scratch in Swift, Apple’s new programming language.

We also now support an iPad version.

What’s next

We expect that after this update people will make more forecasts. We also think their accuracy might go up because both the question text and the useful links are more visible throughout the process of forecasting.

The new design also provides ways to test new features that could improve the process of answering questions. For example, we can now add charts and other useful data right next to the question. While adding external data is a lengthy and complicated process, we’re already moving in that direction. Still, we were very keen to ship this release to make the obvious improvements and continue developing the app iteratively.

Our priority over the next few months will be developing and testing various gamification mechanics. One large part of that is refining special challenges for certain categories of users, for example the ones who give accurate answers for certain assets or question types. For these people, we could offer opportunities to compete with the top analysts and win additional rewards.

Of course, we’re also working on the Android and web versions. The Android version is coming later as there are more devices that we need to cover. The web app will be gradually updated as we add new features. If you want to help out with testing these features, please get in touch with the support team and they’ll add you to the group of beta testers.

If you have any feedback on the new design, please let us know. Of course, there are always things to improve and we already have some ideas of our own.

Thank you for being with us and for sharing your intelligence!