role
Team
1 Designer
timeline
3 months
Service
Product Design
The Current Space
Where Beli excels in personalized recommendations, it fails in fostering meaningful user connection.
Beli has been a fast rising newcomer in the category of food-based social medias. And while their network-driven features expand their user base, the social part of this social media could be improved upon. My new feature hopes to improve communities and connections between users, their mutuals, and the entire Beli platform.
asking the audience
Users want to connect with their social network to share new foods and experiences…
The main appeal users' had when downloading the app was the ability to see their friends' recommendations.
…but believe Beli lacks the tools to do so.
Aside from the partial social aspect, Beli provided no distinctive features for users. After conducting research, I found 3 key application insights:
No Trust
Users' motivations and trust lied within their established social network.
No Discovery
Discovery tools are lacking and users rely on other apps to supplement.
No Incentive
After visiting a restaurant, users have little incentive to stay on the app.
the solution
Messaging designed for connection over food and the dinner table.
Messaging is a high impact, low feasibility feature able to target the intimacy of mutual connections and the desire to gain new ones. This feature supports both personal and public chatrooms— good for suggesting restaurants, creating dinner plans, and chatting about anything and everything food-related.
Private Messaging
Group Chats
Reservation Planning
why it works
Further exploration of the problem led to solution spaces worth developing in.
Ideation began with a 2 hour brainstorming session generating 50+ user-motivated questions to turn the app's challenges into opportunities for design.
From there, the challenges were grouped into 3 opportunity areas, with 30 solutions created for each. What emerged were 6 solutions ready to be researched and analyzed.
prototyping
The final feature needed to promote easy engagement with other users while keeping the Beli branding.
When configuring the messaging system's main flow, 5 points of contact were identified including the: (1) entry point, (2) personal messages, (3) public chatrooms, (4) messaging screen, and (5) additional media popup for messages other than text.
the final dish
Revising based on better visualization and efficient use of screen space.
User testing revealed they wanted more visibility in the messaging feature, including visual cues for new messages and a specified area on the feed for efficient, one-tap chatting. The use of screen space was also maximized, so media actions like reservation planning can be done without missing new messages in the conversation.
key takeaways
When designing for a stronger community, there must be a balance between discovery and interaction.
Think through the user.
Design isn't just about creating features that follow the template of other products before it, but tailoring them to fit the needs of your own user group.
Design imitates life.
Leveraging real life interactions to mimic engagement on the app is crucial to transferring users' plans into the real world actions.