User Preferences: Turning it up a notch

Turning to the Dark Side

The user experience of AppsAnywhere has always been a big focus for us and in fact, forms one of our four product pillars (alongside Delivery Methods, Higher Ed and Analytics). The most popular addition we made in 3.0 was in the UI space: the introduction of a dark mode.

I remember the first time someone asked me for a dark mode… it was during one of the breakout sessions at our SUMMIT Canada event in March 2022. This is probably my favorite example of the power of feedback, and how valuable it is being able to speak to our wonderful clients at these events. Of all the powerful enhancements we made to the product last year, it doesn't go unnoticed that the main delighter was something as simple as the introduction of a dark mode.

I suppose the benefits are obvious from a student experience point of view: those that like to burn the midnight oil no longer have to burn their eyeballs at the same time! Joking aside, dark mode is clearly an accessibility improvement and accessibility is something that I'll be sharing more about in forthcoming blog.

It wasn't just at the SUMMIT Canada event that I heard this request; it was at both UK events we held and in numerous conversations and visits. So, I’m really looking forward to hearing more ideas from customers at our SUMMIT UK & EU 2023 event later this month.

We've continued to act on the feedback we received around our improved portal UI that we introduced in recent releases, and building on the dark mode setting, we’ve now added a user preferences section. This now gives the user the option to not only select their theme, but also how many apps they want displayed on their home screen. We’ve gone from a standard 6 apps, displayed below the search bar at all times, to now giving the option of rows of 4, to display anything from 0 to 20 in multiples of 4.

"Most of our students, especially the media courses, will have many more than 6 active applications"

Users can still view all apps in a grid view, a more traditional webstore type experience, should they wish to see all apps on a page, and now we’ve added a default collection simply called Apps on the main home screen.

"…can there be an all category, for us that would be the most useful and we would probably have that the default then users could choose recent or favs if they want."

This provides a benefit to first time users who haven’t had the opportunity to populate the ‘Recent’ or ‘Favorites’ collections yet, or to create their own app lists. It means there will always be some apps present (in alphabetical order) when a new user logs on for the first time. Once they start launching apps, then the smart collection called ‘Recent’, will start to build a picture of the apps that they have launched. And as before, they can add their favorites to a collection too.

"…once the students are established they'll curate their own list and might swap our default to favorites or recent used"

We’ve added the ability for the browser to remember which collection the user had last selected, so that next time they log on, it will default to the same collection they were using before. So, if they like ‘Favourites’ for example, then ‘Favourites’ will always be what they land on.

These are some quality of life improvements as a result of our user feedback, passed on through our new Feature Request forum, launched earlier this year. So, keep the feedback coming and your ideas could form part of a future release.