Overview
Sprout Social helps businesses manage and engage their audiences across social channels. Primarily a web platform, Sprout lacked dedicated support for its native mobile apps—critical tools for handling time-sensitive social engagement. I joined the team as the mobile design lead to completely redesign the apps and build a scalable mobile framework for future growth.
My role
Led end-to-end design from discovery, design, to implementation.
Collaborators
Cross-functional partnership between Product, Design, Engineering.
Timeline
6 months
2019 launch
Impact
This case study focuses on phase one of the redesign: establishing a solid navigation foundation.
+34%
+16%
+85%
+40%
Problem
Navigation was broken. The tab menu didn’t scale with the growing mobile product suite and wasn’t ideal for certain Android devices. Sprout also had a massive set of filters that users relied on to navigate their aggregated social streams. The filters were overwhelming and lived on a separate screen, which meant users couldn’t see what was active—making it hard to trust the content in front of them.
Solution
Leverage native patterns - To optimize performance, use familiar mobile affordances, and support efficient build times, we aimed to rely on Apple and Material Design native patterns wherever possible while still maintaining consistency with Sprout’s web platform.
Intuitive navigation system - We introduced much-needed structure to make navigation more intuitive, flexible, and reliable. In content-heavy areas, we added clearer hierarchy and nesting within filter groups to help users navigate more easily and stay informed about what content they were viewing.
Mobile design system - This project marked the start of Sprout’s official mobile design system. By designing with scale in mind, the framework and guidance we created made it easier for product teams to contribute to and maintain the mobile apps more sustainably.
Approach
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
Social Professionals
Collaborators
Customer Support
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.
Product Strategist
Researcher
Designer