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trends n friends

From January to March 2020, I took a ten-week long UX Design course, where I was tasked with applying a human-centered design process to a design issue of my choice. As someone who lives and breathes Yelp, I thought it would be fun to explore weaknesses of the platform, with a focus on the restaurant side.

Read my full report here.

I began with usability and user research testing, and I quickly noted the disconnect between the use of Yelp and the socialness of eating. People seemed to be using Yelp solely for the purpose of finding restaurants, but Yelp’s usage ended there.

Problem statement: Beside being a necessity of life, eating has become an increasingly social occurrence. With the rise of social networks, the food experience should address this changing culture by introducing its own social aspect. 

Using UX storytelling, I created three user personas and empathy maps to document how my problem statement affected these personas. I then considered possible user journeys each of my personas would follow when using Yelp.

Solution: Add a social feature to Yelp. Not only would users continue to use Yelp for its primary features, but this added feature, which I called Trends n Friends, would allow for a seamless food experience— from finding a restaurant, going to it, and ultimately sharing the experience.

I first drafted wireframes and user flows. I had Yelp users go through my wireframes and write notes where the flow was not logical. Then, I created high-fidelity prototypes on Figma.

My next steps would be to test my prototypes with users to see if the flow is intuitive and helpful for solving my problem statement.

If I had additional time, I would have tried to conduct more user research to further identify pain points of Yelp users and looked more into the competitive landscape to understand what other companies are doing with regards to integrating socialness into their services.

Walk through my prototype on Figma here.

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