The Client

Yelp began as a simple platform for people to find restaurant referrals online. Today Yelp helps millions of people around the world research restaurants and businesses when they are at home or when they are travelling. Yelp continues to add features to help its users have greater access to quality reviews and information.

The Challenge

We were asked to find a solution to

Alongside two other UX designers I was tasked with delivering a research report citing market and user research, high fidelity wireframes and an accompanying prototype, a brand and style guide outlining the voice and personality of the application, and a finalized logo design. 

How might we connect professionals, with shared interests, to facilitate a comfortable and valuable experience?

Market Research

In order to understand what was missing from the networking ecosphere we conducted market research. We produced a Competitive Matrix, a Comparative Feature Analysis, and a Competitive Feature Analysis.

User Interviews

We wanted to know how real people felt about networking, so we sent out a screener survey to find potential users and asked interviewed them to find out more about their networking habits.

Personas

Using the what we found out in our user interviews we created imaginary user personas to help us stay laser focused on the people for whom we were designing.

Research Driven Design

As we moved into the design phase we used the information we learned through our research to inform all our design decisions.