Spiel
The Problem
Gathering recommendations is messy, and is overwhelmingly unmanageable. Valuable recommendations often get lost on different apps.
An Endless Scatter of Notes and Recommendations
Recommendations often get lost between group chats, social media screenshots, Gmail, and Notes app. This has resulted in time wasted trying to constantly collate recommendations.
A Two Month Deadline
Spiel had to be launched in time for an investor meeting and startup competition.
Designing from 0 to 1
The visual branding, design components, and user experience of the app had to be designed from scratch, and we had to iterate design decisions in quick cadence.
Gathering Market Insight
We found that most users prefer opinions from family and closest friends, versus professional critics or influencers. There was a clear market gap between popular social media apps and review platforms.
The Rise of "Discovery" Algorithms on Social Media Apps
Social media has become become more of a "doomscroll" portal, where browsing has become addictive and pretty meaningless. There is less attention given to friend-to-friend connections, and more emphasis on consuming content instead.
A Social, Review Platform
As a team, we saw an opportunity for a review platform that revolved around the recommendations of friends, where each post would be genuine without the need to impress (akin to Snapchat). Since reviews naturally offer value, we believed they could serve as a more meaningful and useful way for friends to connect and build relationships.
Organizing a Design System
Using atomic design principles to keep components simple and scalable.
Legibility with a Kit of Parts
Standardization through guides and guidelines undergird the success of cross-functional team collaboration. The iterative prototyping of key features began with establishing the smallest building blocks that formed the app. That meant establishing the language both developers and designers would use and fall back on whenever developing a new feature, wireframe, and mockup.
Achieving Quick Cadence
Scaling became an easier thing to do with atomic design principles applied as the translation became a lot clearer, and hence less time was spent on coding new components and handoff became a lot more efficient.
Launching Lean with Key Features
Understanding key user flows to keep the process of creating review cards intuitive and engaging.
Designing for Core User Experiences
Given the tight deadline set for the app's launch, we looked at key user behaviors to draw out the scenarios that lead a user to create a review. There were two key instances, which allowed us to design a user journey that had minimal clicks and screens from start to finish of sharing a review card.
Additionally, engaging with other peoples' review cards had to feel interactive as much as an Instagram post, but also contains extra information to give more contextual information like a Google review.
