Rate My Professors (owned by Viacom) is the highest trafficked online destination for researching and rating college and university professors in the US. As part of the team at Hydric Media, we were enlisted to build their native iOS and Android apps in time for the start of the semester. We worked in tandem alongside Viacom's internal API team to ensure what was specified in design was not only technically feasible but also achievable within their desired timeline.
Above: search tab on iOS and Professor Profile on Android.
Challenges
The goal was for the app to be the ultimate companion tool to aid students when it comes to picking classes each semester. With over 17 million professor comments and ratings to browse, the experience needed to afford efficient ways for students to access this information, and also had to provide ways for them to compare, save and share it with others.
Solutions
With no existing comparison tool to work from, we established a basis for the logic behind starting a new comparison between professors, saving it, renaming it and then later editing it. This gave users the ability to open multiple professors side-by-side to view top-level ratings and comments all from one screen.
Above left: initiating a comparison. Above middle: professors in a comparison. Above right: naming a comparison.
Additionally, with the onset of force touch devices in the market on iOS, we mapped this interaction and a long press on Android to provide the user quick glanceable information of any professor without having to fully open up their profile.
Above: iOS Peek on force touch and Android Long Press of a professor cell, opens glanceable info and quick actions.
As part of my role within the project, I also prototyped some of the apps finer micro-interactions. These included a unique 'hot or not' interaction when rating a professor and also the apps sign up experience.
Above: demo showing sign up flow, saving, searching, rating and comparing a professor.
Details
Client — Viacom Inc.
Agency — Hydric Media
Platforms — iOS & Android
Role — Product Lead
