GUIDES & RECOMMENDATIONS
MY ROLE
Sole UX/UI Designer
User Research
Usability testing
Visual design
Product Manager
PLATFORM
iOS
Android
Web App
TIMELINE
2021 Q1 - 2022 Q2
Working on multiple features
Client brief vs. Final designs
When I was hired to design this product, the founders had already created some low-fidelity design concepts that I started working off of.
Guide Overview
LO-FI DESIGN BY CLIENT
Guide Overview
MY FINAL DESIGN
Guide Overview - Map
LO-FI DESIGN BY CLIENT
Guide Overview - Map
MY FINAL DESIGN
Recommendation
LO-FI DESIGN BY CLIENT
Recommendation
MY FINAL DESIGN
UX Research
Competitive Analysis
The unique selling point of GuidePal is that it’s a tool for creators to produce and sell their own guides, a new way for them to earn income and capitalize on their fan base, that doesn’t involve ads or brand promotions. It gives creators an incentive to want to share their personal favorite spots & recommendations, something their followers might not be able to find anywhere else.
There are, however, a lot of free guides and recommendations online (usually curated by staff writers for the sites), and before getting started with the design process, I researched and analyzed these competitor products.
CONCLUSION
By comparing popular guide / recommendation platforms and analyzing their different target audiences, it helped me narrow down which features to include, and gave me some inspiration for UI design choices.
However, we didn’t have any direct competitors (as in already existing identical services with the same business model), so in the end I relied heavier on interviews & surveys with test users, since I had to make choices that made the most sense for our unique situation and product.
A problem we ran into…
Ensuring quality for the paying customers
When designing this product, I had to constantly consider the perspective of both the Sellers (Creators) and the Buyers (Followers). Unlike a site or app where people can browse free guides & recommendations — typically compiled by professional writers and approved by editors — the guides on GuidePal are created by influencers and sold for $1.99, and with that comes high risk of buyers being disappointed and feeling like they didn’t get their money’s worth.
The challenge was to find the perfect balance between making it fun & easy for the Creator to produce the guides, while still making them put enough time and effort into it so that the published guide feels elaborate & qualitative enough to be worth the $1.99 it cost the Buyer.
Solution
Customer ratings
One of the solutions I designed to tackle this problem was to implement a customer feedback feature.
We decided to start out by not displaying the reviews publicly, as this could discourage creators in the beginning — but the creators would be able to see the feedback themselves in their insights page and use it to improve on their next guide.
This data could also be used for moderation purposes for our Community Managers, i.e. by reaching out to Creators with low ratings and offering them advice & resources to raise the quality of their guides.
In the long-term our plan was to eventually display the average ratings for guides, and to start using this collected data for algorithm-based recommendations — e.g. a creator who has more than 90% upvotes could become a “Super Guide”, similar to how there are highly rated “Super Hosts” on Airbnb.
Usability testing + design iterations
Design evolution over 6+ months
When I took on this role in early 2021 I had previously worked in graphic design, so I did know basic design principles, but I had no prior experience or education in actual UX / UI design. I taught myself as I went along — by analyzing other apps, scrolling through design inspiration sites, watching tutorials, etc — but you can clearly see how my understanding of UX and UI grew stronger over the course of the year of working for GuidePal.
Definitely laughing / cringing at some of my early design iterations now, but I think it’s important to show how I got from A to B to C, and I’m proud of the progress I made in a short amount of time.
v. 1 — July 2021
v. 2 — October 2021
v.2 IMPROVEMENTS:
Hid the bottom navigation on this page.
Swapped out the fonts, for a more refined look.
v. 3 — February 2022
v. 3 IMPROVEMENTS:
Added a swiping indicator at the top of the page, to make it clear to users that they can swipe left and right to flip between Recommendations.
Replaced the “Like” (heart) button with a “Save/Bookmark” function
Moved “Save” function to top of screen
Turned the “Audio” button into a sound bar, to make it more obvious to users that they should play it.
Separated the Location/Map button from the Categories and Price, to make it more obvious it’s a button they can press.
By making these changes, it allowed more space for displaying multiple categories.
Added a text title under each Category, as the icons were not decipherable on their own.
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
The Guide (and the Recommendations within the guide) is the product that users can produce and sell using the service. The guides, which are sold for $1.99, are a collection of location-based recommendations curated by content creators, industry experts & influencers. Each guide can contain 6-15 recommendations — consisting of photos, videos, text, audio, and information about each place — all displayed together on a map.
ABOUT GUIDEPAL
GuidePal is an iOS, Android & web app service for creating and selling location-based guides, with content creators and influencers as the target audience.
MY ROLE
I was the sole Product Designer leading this project between Q1 2021 - Q2 2022, ideating early concepts, creating all designs from first to final versions, presenting regularly to leadership, and delivering final assets for production. I was also simultaneously the sole Product Manager / Head of Product for the company, leading a team of 4 engineers, and working closely with Marketing, Comms, Legal, and the CEO and board.