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MoodBoard

A Customisable iOS Widget App for Personal Photo Memories

MoodBoard is an iOS widget customisation app that lets users create personalised moodboards using photos, stickers, text, emoji, pins, and styles. I supported the team across two key phases. First, improving the onboarding experience, then redesigning the photo editing and widget decoration flow to make interactions more intuitive, precise, and aligned with iOS UI standards.

Timeline:

Nov - Dec 2023 (Onboarding) 

Feb - May 2024 (Widget Editing)

Role: Freelance UX Designer (product UX, research, UI improvements, iOS collaboration)
Tools: Figma, UX Research, Usability Testing
Key focus areas: Onboarding flow, widget editing UI, photo transform (Move / Scale / Rotate)

Redesign Outcome

Onboarding
Editing & Photo Arrangement

Editing Workflow Simplification

Photo Editing Redesign

Problem / Challenge

The app’s core value is creative widget decoration, but users experienced friction in two key areas:

1. Onboarding

  • Walkthrough screens didn’t clearly communicate the feature value fast enough

  • CTA flow felt repetitive and lacked excitement at the final step

  • Navigation patterns (skip/back/continue) needed improvement for smoother first-time experience

2. Editing & Photo Arrangement

  • Editing was difficult when elements were small (low precision control)

  • Too many controls visible at once, creating visual clutter

  • Scroll-heavy controls reduced discoverability and slowed users down

  • Users struggled to select the correct photo when multiple items overlapped

Research & Insights

To validate pain points and prioritise improvements, we ran a user survey (28 responses)

Key themes extracted:

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  • Selection conflicts: users found it difficult to select the correct photo when multiple photos were on the screen

  • Editing precision issues: controls were too small for accurate editing

  • Unexpected behaviour: background removal sometimes removed more than expected

  • UX expectations: users wanted clearer interaction patterns (e.g., delete control like Instagram)

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These insights directly informed the redesign direction.

UX Improvements Delivered

1 Onboarding Improvements

Goal: Make the first-time experience clearer, smoother, and more motivating.​

What changed:

  • Improved information hierarchy and consistency across screens

  • Refined CTA flow to reduce repetition and increase clarity

  • Strengthened final step CTA wording to encourage users to start using the app (instead of generic “Continue”)

Result: onboarding felt more coherent and better aligned with user expectations.

2 Editing Workflow Simplification

Goal: Reduce UI clutter and improve feature discoverability.

Before

  • Many tools shown at once

  • Feature discovery relied heavily on scrolling

  • Interface felt busy (especially during active editing)

After

  • Introduced a cleaner, more structured editing workflow:

  • users interact via a tap-based grouped panel (e.g., Style / Filter / Pin / Transform)

  • controls become contextual instead of all being visible at the same time

Result

  • Reduced cognitive load

  • Faster navigation to desired tools

  • A cleaner editing experience that feels more “iOS-native”

3 Photo Editing Redesign: Transform Mode (Move / Scale / Rotate)

Goal: Enable precise editing for small widget elements.

Before

  • Editing relied on manipulating small elements directly on canvas

  • Precision issues when adjusting position/rotation/scale

  • Harder to control and easy to mis-edit

After

  • Introduced a dedicated Transform mode with clear editing actions:

    • Move

    • Scale

    • Rotate

Result

  • Better precision

  • More confidence during decoration

  • Fewer mistakes and less trial-and-error editing

Collaboration & Delivery

This redesign was developed through close collaboration with the app owner and senior iOS engineer. We iterated on UX solutions together to ensure they were aligned with iOS standards and realistic to implement, as well as balancing usability goals with technical constraints, interaction behaviour, and platform guidelines.

Outcome

This project strengthened MoodBoard’s most important journey:
onboarding ➡️ editing ➡️ widget decoration

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By combining research insights (28 survey responses) and UX redesign, we improved:

  • onboarding clarity

  • editing discoverability

  • editing precision and overall usability

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