Introduction

As a product designer, I want to showcase the broad techniques that are available in the UX Designer’s toolbox to re-define and improve the user experience of an established mobile app. Yelp is an app that is used by millions of users, but it certainly isn’t a perfect app. Here we will take a deep dive and see if we can establish some pain points and improve on the user experience. Note: This is a personal project, and is not affiliated with the Yelp company.

Methodology

Design processes come in all shapes and sizes. The correct design process is the one that is most appropriate for the project. The following sample design process follows IDEO’s Human Centered Design process, which is also able to adapt to an Agile work environment. This case study is broken down into these five sections:

1: Empathize (How do we relate? lets gather the data)

current ia

IA is a visual way of arranging the content of an app or website, by using boxes and lines. This is a great way to flush out pain points, dead ends, and repetitive or redundant actions. If the navigation is disorganized, it will show in the IA diagram. Let’s map out Yelp’s current IA and see what we can find.

After mapping out the IA of the app, I observed a few things. The first 60% of the app is designed to guide you to the other 40% of the app, which is the business detail page. Features that are integral to the app experience are dispersed between many non-essential fillers. Many of these can be re-sorted or eliminated to reduce clutter and enhance the user experience.

USER RESEARCH

User research is the most important source of truth in the design and features implementation process. Designers are able to craft beautiful designs, but many of the user experience decisions must come from a combination of qualitative and quantitative research. Parts of the protocol are outlined below:

objectives

1. Understand the user’s goals along with their pain points

2. Redesign the user experience and refine the visual language

3. Revise the information architecture so that the user experience is clean and tidy.

pre-observation interview questions

1. When do you feel the desire to use the app?

2. How often do you feel the desire to use the app?

3. How much time to do spend on the app on a given session?

4. How often do you know what you want to eat before you open the app?

5. How often do you not know what you want to eat before you open the app?

post-observation interview QUESTIONS

1. What’s your overall impression of the app?

2. How would you rate the app, on a scale of 1-10?

3. What is your single biggest complaint about the app?

4. What is one of the best things that the app does well?

5. What other things bother you about the app that you wish you could change?

6. What is your typical app use process?

7. What is your typical app use process when you don’t know what you want to eat?

PERSONA

By going through the user research process along with researching the target market, we are able to create a fictional person to represent our target user. The persona is the ideal user of the app, and they should be updated as the product continues to evolve.

2: DEFINE (Lets take our data and extract user needs)

IDEA SYNTHESIS

We take our observational data during the research phase, transfer these ideas to post-it notes, and then group them into an appropriate number of common themes. Usually they range from two to five themes, but the most common range is between three and four. We can use these themes to come up with new features and future fixes. Taking our observational data, we have come up with three main themes:

1. “it’s too cluttered”

The app has too many sections that are irrelevant to the user and the sections that they want are located in places they are not expecting, or they’re not prioritized and placed high enough on the app.

2. “Do they still make this dish?”

The app’s photo system has a large glaring issue. Old dishes that were once popular might not be offered anymore, but the photos are not updated accordingly.

3. “the app said you were open!”

The app lists the business’ open hours. Due to a multitude of factors, these times can change rarely or frequently. Due to the occasional inaccuracy, sometimes users are frustrated when a business is closed when the app lists them as open and vice versa.

USER FLOW

User flows help to determine if our designs are staying true to the original intended purpose of the app. Of course apps evolve and add new features all the time, but the core usage should remain the same, and this is no different for Yelp.

REVISED IA

Now that we have this mountain of observational data, interview data, synthesis data, and user data, we can bring it all together to revise the IA of the app. The goal is to always keep the app focused on its core user-base by trimming the features are are not useful, and by making the user experience more pleasant than before.

We have made a few changes to the IA from what it is currently. We have prioritized the the casual user’s needs towards the top of the app and pushed the power user features deeper into the app experience. We reduced the clutter, by re-organizing the major sections, and reducing the number of sections from 85 down to 49.

3: ideate (lets take everything we know and start designing)

wireframes

4. prototype (lets bring it to life)

hi-fi mockups

Hi-fi mockups bring the visions to life. It’s at this stage where stakeholders are able to get a feel for what the app is capable of doing, how it looks, and how the various sections look like. Here we can explore what each section looks like and have discussions on what works and what doesn’t.