Understanding

Understanding the competitive space is key to our product, as is understanding variable reward systems and how to ethically practice our reward system.

The natural bar-goer external trigger is as simple as entering a bar; the internal trigger is wanting to have a surprise. The action is payment and/or choice making at a venue; variable reward comes in small or large, immediate, surprises and tangible rewards like drinks; investment is built in our punch card system.

From an ethical standpoint, the trigger and investment are current habits and should not manipulate the user in any way.

I lead remote alignment discussions using Realtimeboard to ensure that user-centric design decisions were communicated to the stakeholder/developer.

We worked together to ideate on personas and user journeys in order to better understand the realistic use-cases of our product. These tools worked well to foster team-wide empathy for the Austin Social user.

Two users

Our challenge is to design for two users with completely different levels of investment: the happy-hour socialite and the bartender/server.

The bartender is being asked by their managers to test out whether or not the app is worth it for the business (but isn’t as invested themselves)

The socialite is wondering if the product is going to give them the right perks.

With these two users in mind, I have to design a transaction with both minimal effort and maximum reward for both parties.

I kept the following user centric questions at the forefront of my mind while designing:

1. How do I tweak Arielle’s, the happy hour socialite, habits and keep her engaged

2. How do I ensure that Devon, the bartender, doesn’t dislike his experience and talk down the app to his manager.

Feasibility & Scalability

I established reusable design elements within the bootstrap framework and built a style guide with Bootsketch.

Bootstrap ensured: Fewer Cross browser bugs, a consistent framework that supports the majority of all browsers and CSS compatibility fixes, and is lightweight and customizable.

I also I worked with the development team remotely to make a feature prioritization matrix for a first iteration. This enabled us to focus in on feasibility so that we could test early and often.

Ideating

I achieved confidence in my design process by surrounding myself with visuals and empathizing with the mobile user.

We cannot satisfy our users with features that go-to products like Yelp, Google and Infatuation can provide; we have to stand out.

Designing

Using mid-fidelity cards allowed me to put together the puzzle pieces for a responsive and thoughtful design

Using 5 Established Breakpoints and 9 Responsive Mix-ins for Scalability and flexibility as the platform grows and we achieve a better understanding of behaviors through click analytics.

Business Sign Up

Balancing just the right amount of friction during sign-up for business owners is crucial to the success of the platform and the validity of inputs.

Current State