- Snapchat is testing a major redesign of its flagship app.
- According to The Verge's Casey Newton, the company is carrying out two tests rolled out to a small percentage of Snapchat's user base.
- The first is a test of breaking news headlines inside the app.
- The second is a redesign of the app's features and layout, including five screens rather than three, the relocation of its Snap Map, and the introduction of a navigation bar.
- "We're exploring ways to streamline navigation across Snapchat, soliciting feedback from our community to inform future versions of our app," a Snap representative told Business Insider
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Snapchat is testing a major redesign of its flagship app.
According to The Verge's Casey Newton, citing screenshots sent by anonymous sources, the company is carrying out two tests rolled out to a small percentage of Snapchat's user base.
One test is said to involve the introduction of breaking news headlines related to US and world news from selected news publications including NowThis, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
In a section of the app called "Happening Now," these headlines are curated and can be tapped to bring up a full-screen news brief containing a photo and a short article.
The second is a redesign of the app's features and layout, including five screens rather than three, the relocation of its Snap Map, and the introduction of a navigation bar.
"We're exploring ways to streamline navigation across Snapchat, soliciting feedback from our community to inform future versions of our app," a Snap representative told Business Insider on Thursday. "This test's UI offers more space to innovate and increases the opportunity to engage with and discover even more of what Snapchat has to offer. This test is currently visible to a small percentage of our users."
The navigation bar's introduction is especially interesting, as it's a feature Snapchat has long resisted introducing despite the app's ease-of-use.
Indeed, the app's user unfriendliness was what drove Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel to launch its previous big redesign. This introduced a friends page that included both chat messages and ephemeral stories, and feed that prioritized posts from close friends, among other features.
Snapchat will have to be careful this time round, though, as that overhaul – which took place in 2017 – was not met well by users. The company said it lost 2% of its 191 million daily users as a result of the redesign, while over 1 million people signed a petition urging it to reconsider the changes.
SEE ALSO: Snapchat is redesigning its app after CEO Evan Spiegel admitted it's too difficult to use
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