Jing Guo

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Improving productivity for social media managers on the go

Improving productivity for social media managers on the go

Apple app store

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Google Play store

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Overview

Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management platform that helps businesses understand and engage their audiences—wherever they work. While the web app was the primary touchpoint for most customers, growing demand for on-the-go functionality highlighted the need to expand capabilities on mobile. With Sprout’s native mobile apps still in their early stages, I joined the team to systemize the mobile apps and overhaul the native mobile experience, empowering customers to manage social media more effectively, anytime and anywhere.

My role

Led end-to-end design from discovery, information architecture, concepting, design, testing, to implementation support. I also created the mobile design system.

Collaborators

Cross-functional partnership between Product, Design, Engineering.

Timeline

6 months

2019 launch

Impact

The navigation-centered redesign of Sprout’s iOS and Android apps significantly improved the mobile experience and enhanced users’ on-the-go productivity. In addition to conducting qualitative research to understand how the updates influenced social media managers' daily workflows, we also tracked key metrics to measure productivity.

+34%

increase in daily active users on iOS (over 80% of mobile users)

increase in daily active users on iOS (over 80% of mobile users)

+16%

increase in daily active users on Android

increase in daily active users on Android

+85%

Increase in total message actions

Increase in total message actions

+40%

Increase in average screen views per person

Increase in average screen views per person

Let’s take a closer look

Problem

Unintuitive navigation was the biggest barrier to productivity. For a long time, the mobile team was decentralized, and design and development were distributed across various web squads. Over time, the apps outgrew their original architecture, becoming increasingly buggy and fragmented. Even though the problem space was somewhat well-defined, we lacked understanding of our mobile user behaviors and motivations to know how to best serve them.

Approach

The mobile apps in their original state felt like balls of tangled yarn with treasures hidden inside. Much was of the design process was taking things apart and restructuring them based on user insights to make them whole.

Discover user behavior patterns across web and mobile usage, so we can take the mobile apps apart and reassemble them to make the user experience whole.

Understand Mobile Users

Understand mobile Users

Contextual Inquiry

Usability Testing

I initiated the discovery phase with user research, interviewing Sprout mobile users and non-Sprout social media managers about their daily routines to gather insights into their workflows and the role of their devices played. I synthesized the mobile user behaviors to complete our understanding of the existing Sprout user archetypes, which helped to inform our redesign approach.

Business Owners

Small businesses or influential individuals who wear many hats and have to do-it-all. They can often be on-the-go and heavily rely on Sprout mobile for all their social management needs, especially social monitoring and scheduling posts.

Small businesses or influential individuals who wear many hats and have to do-it-all. They can often be on-the-go and heavily rely on Sprout mobile for all their social management needs, especially social monitoring and scheduling posts.

These businesses or individuals tend to wear many hats and are always on the go. They almost exclusively use Sprout mobile for all their social management needs (vs web).

Highlight: many of them were very vocal about their needs not being met and demanded a better mobile experience because they don't always have a choice to use Sprout web.

Social Professionals

Individuals who manages all things social for one or many businesses. They could be working in-house or in an agency setting. These folks often have custom workflows set up to help them work efficiently. They can use web and mobile interchangeably throughout the day, and rely on custom push notifications to keep them alert 24/7.

Individuals who manages all things social for one or many businesses. They could be working in-house or in an agency setting. These folks often have custom workflows set up to help them work efficiently. They can use web and mobile interchangeably throughout the day, and rely on custom push notifications to keep them alert 24/7.

These businesses or individuals tend to wear many hats and are always on the go. They almost exclusively use Sprout mobile for all their social management needs (vs web).

Highlight: many of them were very vocal about their needs not being met and demanded a better mobile experience because they don't always have a choice to use Sprout web.

Collaborators

Individuals actings as approvers or informed stakeholders for social managers. They are usually low-touch with the social management tools, but find mobile helpful in sharing social content and complete workflows.

Individuals actings as approvers or informed stakeholders for social managers. They are usually low-touch with the social management tools, but find mobile helpful in sharing social content and complete workflows.

They tend to use Sprout web during the work day when they are at their desks, and use Sprout mobile after work hours if needed.

Highlight: many of them relied on the notification center as the main way-finding tool because navigation was not intuitive.

Customer Support

Usually teams who primarily uses social to manage customer feedback and requests. They can work in shifts and primary uses Sprout web during their working hours, and use mobile when they need to respond to urgent requests outside of their work time.

Usually teams who primarily uses social to manage customer feedback and requests. They can work in shifts and primary uses Sprout web during their working hours, and use mobile when they need to respond to urgent requests outside of their work time.

Primarily use Sprout web, and only use Sprout mobile to monitor their social feeds and engage in a timely manner when there are problems to address.

Highlight: many users only used the Inbox feature because they found everything else too overwhelming, and would easily get lost in the app going down "rabbit holes".

Take it apart

Information architecture

Card sorting

This project focused heavily on information architecture, requiring us to deeply understand the content and collaborate with end-users to reorganize it in a way that ensures long-term sustainability.

Co-create organizational concepts

Discovery workshops

Drawing on insights from mobile behaviors in user research, card-sorting, and baseline usability studies, I led a series of cross-functional workshops including Sprout super-users to explore and evaluate different content organization concepts. A key question we tackled was whether to mirror the web app’s structure or reimagine it to better align with mobile-specific workflows.

Translate content hierarchy to design components

Wireframes

System UI design

Working within the self-imposed constraint of adhering to native mobile patterns, I designed the navigation components to systematically align with the new information architecture.

Focus on mobile-heavy workflows, design, test, iteration

Interaction design

Usability testing

We were fortunate to have in-house social media managers using Sprout Mobile to manage Sprout's own social presence. When time was tight, they became my most valuable test subjects, helping bring concepts to life. I prioritize rapid iteration, testing ideas early by putting low-fidelity visuals in front of users to accelerate the design process.

Solution

Most of the user problems lied within the navigation system of the mobile app, so we left most of the content untouched for the first round of redesign, and focused on creating an intuitive and scalable navigation to all mobile users.

Most of the user problems lied within the navigation system of the mobile app, so we left most of the body content untouched for the first round of redesign, and focused on creating intuitive and scalable navigation paths to complete their key workflows.

Leverage native patterns - to optimize performance, leverage familiar mobile affordances, and ensure efficient build times, we aimed to use as many native design patterns from Apple and Material as possible while maintaining consistency with Sprout’s design systems

Intuitive navigation system - we made a significant investment in Information Architecture, bringing much-needed structure to dense content sections. This improved the app's navigation, making it more intuitive, flexible, and reliable. We created more nested structure for the filter groups in content-heavy app areas to help users better navigate and be informed of the content in view.

Extended mobile affordances - social media management is a 24/7 job, and leveraging native mobile affordances to create intuitive shortcuts empowered users to stay productive, even outside the office.

Mobile design system - this project marked the beginning of the official mobile design system. By documenting patterns and system guidelines, we provided a foundation that enabled mobile contributors on the product development team to maintain and scale the mobile apps more sustainably.

Product Strategist

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Designer

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Currently based in Sydney, Australia

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Website design and content © 2025 Jing Guo

Website design and content © 2025 Jing Guo