What Now?

Overview

What Now is a review and social networking solution to the question we all ask ourselves: "So...what now?". Unlike competitors, What Now is highly personalized, using an onboarding survey and app usage to generate suggestions for users.

Services

UI Design

Brand Identity

Year

2023

Process

In this mobile app design, I controlled every aspect of the project. My design process for What Now began with research, user stories, user scenarios, and interviews. I then moved on to benchmarking similar applications and building an information architecture. Sketches quickly turned into wireframes and through many iterations, type studies, and user-testing, the final UI took shape. I've included just a few of the most influential steps below.

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User Stories

Storytelling is the heart of the user experience. These 5 research-based user stories describe the user’s role, their task, and their goal or motivation for completing the task.

As a new resident of Boston, I want to find the best restaurants near me, so I can get to know my area better.
As a NYU graduate living in New York City, I want to find new places to go, so I can branch out of my usual routine.
As a 30 year old on vacation in Charleston, I want to locate the local favorites around me, so I can get to
know the city.
As a San Francisco resident who just moved to a new neighborhood, I want to find the best spots near my apartment, so I can take advantage of what this new area has to offer.
As an avid review writer, I want to try new places, so I can write reviews and post photos of them to help others.

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Interview Takeaways

Cost Efficiency

4 out of 5 participants mentioned cost as a frustration while finding new places to go in Boston. To alleviate this pain point, I can include a feature to filter suggestions by cost.

Information Accuracy

3 out of 5 participants mentioned miscorrect information found online as a pain point or frustration. To minimize this issue, I can have administrators manage the application and keep track of user-reports. I can also ensure that the database the application pulls from is frequently updated.

Trustworthy Reviews

2 participants mentioned reading reviews when discussing what they enjoy about the search process and one mentioned that they, “sometimes feel that [they] can’t trust reviews”. I can alleviate this pain point by only allowing confirmed users who visited a place to review it and suggesting to users that they post photos along with their review.

Personalized & Curated Suggestions

3 out of 5 participants mentioned that their ideal application would include personally curated suggestions based on their previous selections. This surprised me a little because I know many users feel creeped out when apps track and provide information based on their usage. I plan on using both the user’s indicated preferences and automatic data tracking to generate suggestions. However, I also plan on keeping the suggestions semi-randomized so users do not get annoyed by only seeing the same type of places every time.

Transportation Assistance

4 out of 5 participants mentioned commute/transportation assistance as a pain point or something they’d like to have. I found this a little surprising because of the amount of great transportation assistance already out there. To alleviate this, I will indicate the suggested mode of transportation and intuitively link the application to the user’s GPS app of choice (i.e. Apple Maps or Google Maps).

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Information Architecture

I created a site map in order to organize and clarify the content and understand relationships between the app's pages. This step brought me much clarity in my design process.