UX/UI Case Study:

POLONA — MOBILE EXPERIENCE DESIGN FOR THE NATIONAL LIBRARY IN POLAND

Challenge

Challenge

POLONA is the digital platform of the National Library of Poland, providing open access to millions of cultural and historical artifacts.

As POLONA expanded its digital presence, there was no dedicated mobile experience.
On behalf of Transition Technologies-Software, my role was to design a mobile-first interface based on selected web structures, ensuring accessibility, clarity, and comfortable navigation within a large-scale cultural archive.

POLONA Mobile — Key Flows

Search & Filtering

Goal: Help users quickly find relevant items within a massive cultural archive.

What I did:

  • Simplified search results layout for mobile clarity

  • Designed accessible, easy-to-reach filters

  • Improved visual hierarchy of titles and metadata

Impact: Faster narrowing of results and reduced cognitive overload on small screens.

Item Detail

Goal: Make complex archival metadata readable and scannable on mobile.

What I did:

  • Structured content into clear, digestible sections

  • Prioritized key metadata

  • Preserved context while navigating between items

Impact: Clearer understanding of each object without overwhelming the user.

Viewer / Reading and Research Mode

Goal: Enable comfortable viewing of high‑resolution archival content while supporting note‑taking, pinning annotations directly to visual elements, and searching within scanned materials.

What I did:

  • Designed a minimal, content‑first interface

  • Reduced visual noise to keep focus on the material

  • Implemented intuitive zoom, navigation, and annotation interactions

Impact: More focused, efficient reading and research workflows on mobile.

Experimental Features

Concept Exploration: The National Library proposed an experimental, block‑based search concept (inspired by Scratch‑style logic) for building advanced queries.

My role: I translated this idea into a usable mobile interface, designing the visual system, interaction patterns, and logic structure that allowed users to construct complex searches through modular blocks and lightweight scripting interactions.

UI & Visual Identity Evolution

While the core visual identity had been previously established, my role was to translate and expand it into a consistent, scalable mobile UI system.

I designed the complete icon set and key visual details, refined the visual language for mobile, and proposed an evolved logo concept (ultimately not implemented due to pre‑existing contractual constraints, but positively received by stakeholders).

Overall, the mobile layer introduced a more cohesive, modern, and functionally robust visual system.

Professional Endorsement

The project was developed in close collaboration with the internal product and development team at the National Library. Below is feedback from the full-stack developer and analyst I worked with directly during the mobile experience design process.

"Anita helped The National Library of Poland redefine our mobile app layout to compete with popular modern solutions. In a short time she worked through multiple prototypes to deliver a full smartphone and tablet experience. She combines creativity with precision, avoids shortcuts, and provided important layout recommendations that improved the final project."

— Igor Rosa, Full‑stack Developer & Analyst, The National Library of Poland

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