First Five Experiments

Over the last five years, we have done lots of small changes to the Feedly Mobile application. All aligned on offering you the best Web reading experience possible.

As the mobile app is reaching its end of life. It is time for a new app, and a new design.

Given that redesigns are hard, we have opted for a more open, collaborative, and fun process. We call it the Mobile+AI Lab.

Here’s how it works: Every two weeks, we push out a new version of the beta app to the Lab community. We use Slack to collect feedback and ideas to integrate back into the beta for more testing.

You can see the results of the past ten weeks on the Lab Trello.

We are so impressed with this new process that we are scaling the Lab to 4,000 early adopters from 400 currently.

So that we are all on the same page, here is a summary of the first five experiments and what we learned. We love your candid feedback. We know that the beta app is still very early and raw. You will not hurt our feelings. We see your concerns and frustrations as opportunities to improve.

Experiment 01 — New Smooth Scrolling

This is a big change from paged scrolling. We want to make sure that we learn so that smooth scrolling is superior in every way possible.

Test for yourself:
Join experiment 01-scrolling
Read the blog post

Question for the community:
Do you prefer the new smooth scrolling or the old paged scrolling? If you prefer the old paged scrolling, please let us know why?

Experiment 02 — New Views

Maximizing screen space is really important for a lot of users, so we added a compact view option.

Test for yourself:
Join experiment 02-views
Read the blog post

Question for the community:
Are you satisfied by the new views? Any gaps?

Experiment 03 — New Tab Navigation

The lab community tested our new bottom tab bar and open/close animation, helping to fine-tune these two features.

Test for yourself:
Join experiment 03-navigation
Read the blog post

Question for the community:
What do you think of the new article open/close animation?

Experiment 04 — New Mark As Read Workflows

Different people have different workflows. So with the new app, we are supporting a few different workflows.

Test for yourself:
Join experiment 04-mark-as-read
Read the blog post

Question for the community:
Where you able to optimize your mark-as-read workflow with one of the five options?

Experiment 05 — New Night Mode

Some people love a darker reading mode. The community has been playing a key role in tuning the contrast and colors used in the night mode.

Test for yourself:
Join experiment 05-night-mode
Read the blog post

Question for the community:
Are you satisfied with the contrast of the new night mode? If not, please let us know what luminosity level you use.

Welcome on board. We look forward to collaborating with you!

-Edwin, Petr, Emily