ResearchGate Mobile
Designing an Android app from scratch for the largest online scientific community
The Product
ResearchGate is an online platform that allows scientists and researchers to access over 160 million publication pages and stay up to date with what's happening in their fields, as well as networking with their community, sharing their research, fostering peer collaboration, and getting in-depth stats of the impact of their work, by scoring their influence and keeping track of their citations.
RG is currently used by 25 million scientists around the world, as of 2023. It is considered the largest professional social network for scientists and researchers by active users.
Initially designed for undergrad and graduate students, RG's main motivation has been to provide free access to scientific publications to make knowledge accessible.
Overview
| Company | ResearchGate GmbH |
| Product | Android Mobile App |
| Team | Product Department → Design Team |
| Roles | Senior Product Designer I |
| Scope | UX, UI, design system |
| Tools | Figma |
| Timeline | July - December 2022 |
I designed ResearchGate's Android app from scratch, including the login, feed, profile, publications, and navigation experiences to increase engagement with the platform as well as alleviating the primary need of keeping up to date with new research being published.
Business impact
👍🏻 User engagement grew
And hence more feature requests to nurture the app.
📱Google Play numbers went up
1+ million downloads with 4.3/5 stars as of Q1 2023.
🍎 AppStore numbers went up
1 million downloads with 4.7/5 stars as of Q1 2023.
User impact
😃 Happiness to catch up on the go
Browsing and saving publications on the go was finally available to them. No more boring rides.
👌🏻 An almost flat learning curve
They shared they could learn to use the app quite easily as they found the interface straight-forward.
🎁 Wish to have more features
Features like uploading research or having more user actions were expected to be added soon. Again, there was some engagement with these requests.