Year on Yelp is an annual campaign designed to celebrate the app's most dedicated users and their impact on the platform. In November of each year, Yelpers receive an email, mobile, and in-app push notification to signify that their results are ready. From this, they can view their year's contributions and share a recap of their top results to social media platforms. My role in shaping Year on Yelp initially stemmed from a social media perspective and providing insights on how we can make this moment go "viral" for our brand. However, I quickly realized there were a number of limitations including tight timelines and limited resources from the engineering team that would prevent this campaign from achieving its full potential.
With this in mind, I shifted my focus to approach this campaign from a user experience stance to find a way to address the needs of users in a more ideal setting. Working with a product designer on the team and tapping individuals within the Yelp community, I reimagined how this campaign might be experienced if we had access to greater resources.
Redesign of the Year on Yelp web view and mobile view
While Yelp may be known as a platform to verify businesses, see average ratings, and learn about others' experiences, many forget that the driving force behind the app is a large community of Yelpers and Yelp Elites. This community is responsible for the content that appears on the site from detailed reviews to images of experiences. This user base of dedicated Yelpers provides the context that individuals can use to make assessments or decisions about engaging with a business. Ensuring these users are engaged and continually excited to contribute is the company's priority.
There are a few brands already creating end of year recaps for their users. While some excel at displaying these metrics insights in playful ways, others opt for a more traditional route. With Yelp's goals in mind, I've identified some key features to leverage.
• A“Gen Z” design aesthetic that departs from the typical Yelp brand to drive social shares.
• Inclusion of a sticky navigation bar or timeline that allows users to jump from section to section with ease.
• Ensure that the “share to social" button is made prominent and easy to access. This button could appear in multiple sections of the recap, but we’ll need make sure it is easy accessible and convenient to use.
Researching other brands' yearly recaps allowed me to understand what works and what doesn't in this space and ultimately, how to design an experience worth sharing.
During this project, it was important to establish user needs and desires when it came to insights, contributions, and impact on Yelp. In order to gain more insight, I set up and conducted remote interviews with a combination of Yelp users and Yelp Elites. According to Yelp, Yelp Elites are considered to be"people who are active in the Yelp community and role models on and off the Yelp site." These users are often the highest contributors in their metros so I specifically wanted their perspective on what they would like to see and what would motivate them to continue contributing to the app.
“Last year, I didn't share my results to social media since I wasn't certain if my friends would care to see my contributions. However, I did share it with my immediate 'foodie' community and was excited to see their impact as well." - Yelp Elite Interviewee
After interviews, I began to think about how we might organize this information so that users remain engaged throughout the entire experience and also feel prompted to share on social media. In this flow, a user logs into their Yelp account on the mobile app, clicks on the Year on Yelp CTA, and is taken to the web view that shares their personalized results.
I adapted my sketches into low-fidelity wireframes to organize the content that would be presented in the web view. This was an opportunity to really play with the visual design and stylistic elements of the recap. While imagining different layouts, I also wanted to keep the Yelp brand in mind. I explored the graphic design and illustrations more freely, while keeping the text treatment and typography consistent with Yelp's look and feel.
Ultimately, I decided the wireframe on the far left was the most playful, fun, and"Yelp"-y.
Keeping the goal of social shares in mind, I selected a more "holographic" color palette with blue and purple tones to look back at the year. As we're targeting a "Gen Z" audience, the "holographic" approach felt more playful while still evoking nostalgia for the past year's memories. At first I was hesitant that the UI Kit could be considered off-brand, but I would later receive ideas from Yelp users and Elites on how to bring the Yelp brand back in.
The most critical part of this design process was to hear feedback from the Yelp community itself. As this campaign is designed with Yelpers in mind, it was crucial that I connected with both Yelp users and Yelp Elites to gain an understanding of what resonated with them and what did not. I specifically looked for feedback regarding the accessibility of the "share to social" CTA as well as thoughts on the initial UI kit. Interviews with Yelp community members and design critique brought forward issues with my first round of designs.
Some key points of feedback included:
“To help keep me engaged, I would be more interested in seeing my Year on Yelp results first without having to scroll down to find it."
- Yelp Elite Interviewee
With these considerations in mind, I addressed these points of feedback by...
While this is not always easy or feasible, it's important to find a way to align user interests with stakeholder priorities. For this campaign specifically, stakeholders wanted this experience to "go viral" on social media platforms. In implementation, this looks like having high click through rates on our CTA buttons and numbers to indicate that the user ultimately shared the asset to their preferred platform. In order to achieve this, I had to think carefully about what would motivate a user to make that choice to share to social platforms. The user's goal in this situation was a genuine interest in the data and metrics they were receiving. Based on interviews, Yelpers wanted information that was insightful and thus, worth sharing with their larger community. In this way, I had to develop a Year on Yelp experience that delivered users compelling results that they would share in order to achieve stakeholder's goals.
In my efforts to make the Year on Yelp experience visually exciting for users, I initially strayed from the Yelp brand identity. This was confusing for Yelpers who saw my design and did not immediately associate the project with Yelp. The lesson learned here was that while there are times for creativity, the brand and existing design systems in place must not be overlooked.
