Jim Lee, who is the person behind the new design -- along with design help from Bakken & Baeck and illustrations from Timo Kuilder, had this to say:
Hey great question!
Out of the many goals for our design, two stand out.
Expo has got to be a place where professionals feel like they can publish their projects and attract people who would have never crossed paths with their projects before. We think it is really cool when any creator is able to see engagement from people outside of their network, and we definitely want way more of this.
Second, Expo wouldn't be a great platform if people couldn't come to learn and get started with our tools. So we worked to made it easy to search our documentation, learn how to get started, and soon we'll make it even easier to see example code.
Over time our design will evolve with our users, and I think today we are really well positioned for that!