Pixabay

To understand the problem space better I set out to study how users currently use Pixabay / accomplish their tasks. I studied user wish lists, reviews and feedbacks I found online. This helped me to better understand the people who use Pixabay, gave me valuable insights around what they like, don’t like and would like to see in the app. The most pressing issues were that the app is not intuitive/user-friendly, “clunky”, doesn’t have a landscape mode and it only has a small selection of categories.

By conducting an interview and a naturalistic observation session with a user I managed to discover insights I didn’t come across in my online search. We compared three different applications: Pixabay, Pexels and Unsplash.
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Pexels: easy to use, looks better than the other two, easy to navigate, has better images filter suggestions and bigger buttons, shows who took the picture on the results page so she can go to the profile of that contributor to see their images, simple interface, has filter suggestions before someone starts typing in the search box, search suggestions on typing and it’s helpful.
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Unsplash: slow and confusing, search suggestions on typing.
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Pixabay: doesn’t have a back button to search result, too many ads, categories are difficult to use and doesn’t have many

Based on my research I sketched out some ideas which I later translated into wireframes that served the foundation of my design. I took inspiration from Pexels and Unsplash apps that already had solutions in place for some of the problems Pixabay was facing.

For the design I used their existing brand identity, followed UI best practices and Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines.

With the implementation of these changes Pixabay could see increase in user satisfaction, amount of downloads and could be seen as a more professional player in the stock photo industry.