Revisiting VSCO

Aug 02, 2016

Let's talk about VSCO and their recent overhaul app update that generated a lot of feedback from the community especially designers. Whenever you liked it or not, one thing for sure is no one ever (ever) like change. It's part of who we are as human beings and I don't think it's going to change anytime soon. From my personal opinion, the app has (and still) important user flow problems that disadvantage your experience with it. After Instagram, VSCO is my second "go-to" app on my phone, it's a really great photo editing app that totally change the game for me. Having thoughts, I should investigate the philosophy/concept VSCO had about this update, it would be great to share with you guys. As many would think about doing a redesign?

Of course as we take a closer look of Ilja Miskov and his improvements to the app. Taking on the simplicity and minimalism of VSCO brand, Ilja took an even more simple approach to the UI and took an extra care to the icons. Which reminded how frustrating it was to navigate through the current VSCO app and really not understanding what were the icons for until you clicked on them. It still the case.

But their recent redesign of the app is just terrible. Even after the update to 4.0 they have already confused millions of users with weird iconography. Many including myself wouldn't understand what those icons meant to be and what actions they do. But now with the version 5.0 the whole user experience of the app has gone wild. I don't understand how to interact with the app, I don't understand how those weird gestures they introduced should help me navigate through the app. They've made everything even more confusing, settings less accessible and even the iconography less understandable again.