Flavors You Can Trust | Yopals App
Client
Yopals
Role
Sr. UX/UI Designer
Timeline
3 Weeks
Team
Two Designer
Year
2020
Yopals was designed as a social platform, direct competitor of Yelp, with an emphasis on providing users with authentic reviews, event recommendations, and a personalized profile experience.
My role as the Senior UX/UI Designer was to conceptualize, design, and deliver an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that encapsulates the platform’s core functionalities, ensuring a seamless & engaging user experience.
Understanding the Problem
The primary challenge was to:
- Create a digital App where users could share authentic reviews and experiences.
- Provide businesses with a platform to promote their services.
- Include gamification elements to engage users and encourage active participation.
- Ensure scalability for future features like subscriptions and analytics.
Challenges in Process
Challenges I faced throughout the Process was majorly connected to the time(which was limited):
- Skipping the wireframing stage made it difficult to map out the overall structure of the app.
- Without design system, maintaining consistency in typography, spacing, and components across the app was challenging.
- With multiple features like reviews, events, Yoplometer, and user profiles, ensuring a clean and intuitive layout without overwhelming the user was difficult.
- A tight timeline to deliver the MVP gave a very little room for explorations or elaborate design planning.
- Due to time constraints, testing was limited (QA testing only) instead of an actuall audience.
- The lack of foundational design systems and wireframes posed challenges for future scalability and adding advanced features.
Despite these challenges, the project was successfully delivered with teamwork by focusing on collaboration & iterative feedback.
Research
Competitive Analysis
Competitive differentiation for Yopals
- The Yoplometer adds a unique engagement metric, encouraging users to interact with the platform regularly.
- Combining restaurant discovery, event exploration, and user experiences in a single platform.
- Focus on building a trusted community where users can interact and collaborate.
- Personalized feeds and recommendations enhance the user experience.
Surveys
Conducted with 200+ users, including food enthusiasts, event-goers, and general app users focusing on their expectations from a review platform.
Key insights we concluded from questioner and businness discussions were:
- 82% of users wanted personalized recommendations based on location and interests.
- 65% of users preferred a gamified experience to track their activity and engagement.
- Business owners valued sponsored results to improve visibility.
- Food bloggers appreciated the blogging system.
These insights shaped the core features and the Yoplometer, which gamifies user participation.
Scope
The project scope required, defining core MVP features:
- Onboarding Flow with SMS OTP.
- Homepage with service categories and featured brands.
- Search Functionality prioritizing location with filters.
- Events for curated recommendations.
- Insights with blogs/articles.
- Customer’s Space with a personalized feed, profile, and engagement statistics.
Information Architecture
Then we jumped on aligning the content to each page & defined heirarchically for clear navigation:
Designing the Solution
Onboarding
Created a smooth and engaging experience for new users, we used stepper approach to ensure they don’t get overwhelm seeing all feilds at the same time.
Featuring Services & Brands - Homepage
Highlighting curated businesses and services, providing users with a quick overview of what’s popular or recommended in their area.
Location-first Search
Ensured users quickly find relevant results that are nearby or within their preferred location.
Curated Recommendations - Events
Users can discover events that align with their interests, creating a curated experience that keeps them engaged with local activities.
Insights - Blogs/Articles
Providing users with engaging, informative, and relevant content that enhances their trust on the platform.
Personal Space - User Feed, Profile, Stats
To foster a sense of ownership and engagement by giving users a personalized area to interact with the platform.
Conclusion
Outcomes
- Successfully launched the MVP within the deadline.
- Received positive feedback for the Yoplometer and streamlined navigation.
- Learned that design systems significantly enhance workflow efficiency.
- Wireframing, though skipped here, could have saved time during the iteration phase.
Next Steps
- Implementing design system
- Business profile & advanced features with subscription.
- Conduct A/B testing for further refinement.
- Dark mode based on user feedback.
