Yelp is a social platform that enables users to find nearby businesses. However, “social network” isn’t the first term people think of when they hear the word Yelp. Even when searching online for popular social media networks, Yelp is often left off the list entirely (Wood Street Journal). This is because Yelp focuses more on generating reviews and support for local business owners, while in-app interaction remains limited.
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I designed and integrated a social feature for the Yelp app that connected users to businesses through peer recommendations from the Yelp community. I conducted research, designed the interaction flow, and tested the feature with real users.
Duration2 months (2021)
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ToolsFigma
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RoleProduct Designer
TeamSolo Designer
Yelp allows businesses to interact with their customers in an approachable manner with features like Request A Quote, a direct response to reviews, and reservations. They have also successfully built a dedicated community of users and content contributors that interact with each other through reviews, images, ratings, etc.
Currently, the Yelp app provides users recommendations solely based on what's nearby in their area. What's missing though, is the ability to discover new businesses through peers.There is an opportunity for Yelp to drive direct user interaction and drive discovery of local businesses.
As predicted, results show that users frequently use Yelp to look at reviews and discover local businesses, but none of them would consider they use Yelp for the social aspect. Furthermore, none of the users utilized Yelp’s direct messaging system.
I then conducted a series of interviews to further test my hypothesis that a recommendation feature would be useful in creating a better business discovery experience. I interviewed users who use Yelp at least 1-2 times a week.
The goals of the interviews were to:
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Understand how users currently discover new businesses in their everyday life
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Gain insight on how users use Yelp to engage with other users and businesses
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Understand what considerations users have before accepting suggestions from others
I mapped out data from the interviews on an affinity map to identify common pain points users face and form an understanding of our user group.Through my conversations, I was able to validate that much of local business discovery is driven by social activity, as follows:
Yelp users trust each other's opinions. They enjoy using Yelp because they usually find reviews to be credible and accurate to their actual in-person experiences.
Users rely on external social media platforms to discover new businesses. Some users discover new businesses through Tiktok’s explore feed. Other users discover new businesses through Instagram, when their friends post on their stories and tag business locations.
Users rely on Yelp reviews to help separate the "okay" places from the best places - and they write reviews to help others out in the same way. It's the notion of sharing experiences that makes using Yelp an enjoyable experience.
Users are more likely to listen to recommendations from their friends, aka people they know in real life. This is an important factor for me to consider when building out the levels of interaction within the feature.
To prioritize potential solutions, I mapped out the user journey and defined possible features that address the user action at each step. I made sure to differentiate between the flow a user would take to make a request, and the flow they would take to give a suggestion.
A site map was created to show where the new feature would be found throughout Yelp. My goals were to introduce the feature in a way that was unobtrusive to the current user experience and to make sure users will be properly informed and educated about the feature. Â
While brainstorming concepts for feature integration, I came across this case study on the 2018 launch of Yelp’s Bookmark Collections feature. This feature was introduced through a “new” notification icon and an onboarding screen of how the feature works. To maintain design consistency, I replicated this UX for the recommendation feature.
Here is a visual mockup of how I incorporated the new feature. Instead of designing a separate tab for the feature, I figured it made the most sense to integrate it into the existing “Me” tab, which is where users can view their profile, check their notifications, write reviews, and view their impact on the Yelp community.
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After defining the architecture and flow, I began sketching ideas and then creating high-fidelity mockups using UI consistent with that of the existing Yelp app.
I conducted one round of usability testing with 6 participants using Maze, a virtual user testing platform. My testing objectives were to determine if users could easily understand how to use the new feature and whether the feature provided value to business discovery.
Users were tested on the following tasks:
Accessing the new feature and completing onboarding
Creating a request
Viewing responses from friends
Replying to a friend's request
While participants were able to complete all tasks, I found three main changes that needed to be made to the design:
Some users found "Start a request" misleading due to associations with requesting services from a business. Thus, I renamed the CTA to “Request a recommendation” to add more clarity to the action being taken.
Users were confused about how to reply to a request due to the lack of CTAs. I added a “Suggest” CTA to each request card in order to reduce the confusion.
Initially, a recommendation request would be sent to all of a user’s friends. However, from the usability tests, I learned that users instinctively wanted to be able to request recommendations from specific friends. This was a feature that I decided not to prioritize earlier on in my design process, but research and testing revealed that people felt more comfortable making requests to their close friends (people they trust). Thus, I added this capability so users can have more freedom in who they would like to request from.
A “New” notification directs users to the recommendation feature. Then, an onboarding flow gives an introduction to how the new feature works.
Simply search for the type of business or activity of your choice and add your desired location. You can choose to send your request to all friends or just a couple from your list.
When viewing your friends’ suggestions, you can visit the businesses’ pages to learn more or directly add them to your bookmarked collections.
Help out a friend in need - recommend your favorite businesses either through a quick search or by selecting from your bookmarks.
A challenge I faced was figuring out how to effectively integrate the new feature into the Yelp app without making it feel too aggressive. In my first iterations, I put the new feature right on the homepage so it would be the first thing users see when they open the app. Through exploring additional design iterations, I found more subtle ways for the new feature to exist in the Yelp ecosystem.
In this project, I learned how to define the problem space through secondary research of Yelp's business goals and using user research methods of interviews and surveys to validate my secondary research findings. This helped me induce a solution that would benefit both business and user goals.
If I had more time, I would:
Build on the concept of facilitating discussions among users - perhaps allowing users to reply to suggestions
Consider time-sensitive requests - what if a user wanted recommendations for a birthday dinner by a specific date?
Explore incentive options that will encourage users to respond to requests - possibly something like the Yelp Elite program
