My goal was to make something somewhat inspired by the Yahoo News Digest app, then I realized that not having pictures could be an issue with the personality of the articles, a simple list of text will look to serious and not fun to read. My approach was to give some life to the list by using different colors based on the index of the article.
I planned making this app in 3 tiny sprints (sadly I only had time for the 2 first ones):
1.- A list of articles that had their background colors generated based on their index. A simple webview that loaded the article. Finally, a styled navigation bar.
Bonus track: App icon.
2.- A floating button on the articles list that would show a grid of tags. The tag items would contain the label and as a background a blurried version of the wikithumb.
Bonus track: Default screens (splash screens).
3.- Selecting an article will no longer take to a webview, but to a paginated list of articles, something similar to what Yahoo's News Digest app does but with another personality.
Improving the tag screen so instead of just appearing from the bottom the screen it would first blurry (using a dark shade), then making the tags grow into the screen in random order, like little bubbles.
Bonus track: Pull to refresh, my idea here was to have an orbit with their particles been dragged into the orbit while you scroll with a little bit of resistance. Once you reach to the magic point, the particles will start floating around like this finally when the loading is finished the particles will explode in different directions.
It was fun to make the app, I had so many thoughts on what to do, it felt refreshing.
It was awesome to read more about Orbit, sounds very promising and the branding looks awesome.
Thanks a lot for the oportunity, I hope you enjoy the app as much as I did.
XOXO, Elvis