Spot.app
Spot.app
A fun way to explore places
A fun way to explore places
Understanding the Problem
Exploring places and discovering places has become too boring this days. Checking out reviews of places on Google maps has been such a mundane experience. Travel & Food are the most social things, we connect better with people who share taste which matches with our preferences. We often seek recommendations from our friends. Recommendations from friends add a unique layer of experience to our exploration. It ensures three key things,
TRUST
The suggestion coming from some one we know, it's adds trust to experience. Word of mouth is still a great signalling effect in the digital world we live in.
TRIBE
Recommendations have great value in our life for a reason, it gives people sense of tribe, a satisfaction of having a collective place in our life.
TASTE
We share taste with our friends, and even not completely in every space but in some places we have similarty in tastes. I t can be kind of places, restaurant, kind of food etc.
Branding
Branding involved designing the illustrations, stickers, in-app reaction interactions, including the visual identity of the app.
Mobile Design
Mobile Design comprised of developing the overall UI of the app,which comprised of various UI components which was curated into design system
So, What does
Spot helps
you do ?
All of your friend's favv spots at one place
With Spot, recommend places with your friends & discover your favourites places
Curates places based on vibe and taste
Say Goodbye Google lists, create curations and share with your friends. Explore. Curate.Share
Host Travel Trips, City Thrills with friends
With Spot, plan trips , participate in events and more with your friends
What are the deliverables ?
Understanding
the painpoints
Connecting the dots
User Research & Interviews
Types of travellers
Some more research on the niche
From Insight to Impact
The very first step was to compile how users are currently exploring places and what pain points they come across during the discovery places. This involved various factors like taste, kind of service, ambience of place etc.
This helped me, in focusing the problems faced and based on those views helped me touch base upon to behaviours which can be further solved. Based on user response and interviews, I divided user reponse into 3 categories i.e Pain points, Wants and Solution
Now, having significant time on user interviews and noting down research insights, it was time to translate the insights to action which had impact on user. For this, I created user personas and jotted down their journey to gather the action item.
After interviewing people and translating the pain points into user personas. I tried researching on the why social recommendations matter when discovering places. I spend time on Claude & ChatGPT to provide insights alongside the traditional research practices.
Explorer
Probable Solution
Recommend places which
matches the taste of user
PainPoint
Lacks informations and
misleading due to generic reviews
User likes to explore new places
when travelling.
Discoverer
Users likes to discover places based on recommendation coming from friends.
PainPoint
Bookmarked places in the form of Reels, friend's post.
Probable Solution
Curations by friends helps user discover places
Social
A community where user can post and get answered
PainPoint
Currently, seeks travel related recommendation via Reddit, Instagram
Probable Solution
Social feed with reliable members would help.
Curator
Users wants to curate places based on different tastes.
PainPoint
Users bookmarks places in Google Maps and becomes messy often.
Probable Solution
Allowing dynamic curations to users would make things better
Tanya Patel
College Student
Tanya is in college and is likes to travel and explore places. Tanya likes to maintain list of things she wants to do right from street food in the city to must visit places nearby. Tanya likes to discover places based on recommendation of friends.
Chat with friends/family using Whatsapp
Via Instagram Reels/ Stories by friend regarding a place
Bookmarks places in Google Maps, reels on Instagram, saves in Whatsapp Chat.
Posts a tweet or story for recommendation on social media
The bookmarked post or reel often get lost in sea of Whatsapp messages/Instagram Reels
No response from people via Whatsapp
No response/ lacks the quality of recommendations via tweet.
How Tanya current journey looks like
Problems faced by Tanya
Samay Grover
Content Creator
Samay is engineer who creates content around travel and authentic places which are often not appeared in mainstream content. He likes curates spots based on different vibe and like to share his experiences online with friends and family
Samay compiles down his explorarions and recommendations in Notion page or personal blog.
Creates a 30 seconds reels on his discoveries, writes reviews on Travel sites like TripAdvisor, Google Maps
Most of the curations are scattered across multiple portals like Whatsapp notes, blog, Google maps etc
Reels are good for summary of experience but not suitable for long form or rather descriptive format
Content is not organised.
How Samay's current journey looks like
Problems faced by Samay
Once getting good enough information gathering from users and penning down all the probable issues faced by people while discovering places, I spent time on products which has map as a central and core feature.
I spent hours on social apps like Corner, Bump(App by Zenly), Headout, TripAdvisor, Nomadlist, to understand the psychology of traveller and what problems they faced.
Let's make discovering places fun
Visual design was the most challenging and fun part of this project. Social discovering has not been new topic, it has been there for a while.
Based on research, we enjoy experiences which comes from our close friends, with people having shared tastes.One user said, 'I am more likely to go to 'Kashi Chaat Bhandar , my friend visited last year Varanasi and posted this on Instagram this amazing reel about the place.' We bookmark places, reels, follow profiles which shares information about city etc.
User typically mostly wanted this 3-4 things covered
Social map of friends, where they can easily see their friends travel activity in real time.
Curations/Wishlists created by their friends or based on their social activity.
Explore places & host activities within a city, like hosting a street food hoping down the town, exploring city activities.
Home is the screen with feed of user's friends activity & taste
Feed helps user with a kind of activity her friends are recommending
Popular activities to explore near by your current location
Friends Map tab navigates user to real time social map of all the friends
User can explore custom maps curated by friends & community
The first initial screen plays a very important role in any app's journey. The aim for initial screens was to let user know about the app in fun and impactful manner. For this we came up with idea of keeping the color palette to be vibrant and overall theme to be fun and enjoyable experience
Once the user has logged in the app, it was time for home screen, for home screen was the like opening door to world of discovery and exploration. while working, we explored bunch of ideas for home screen. Initially we thought, asking the city user want to explore and based on input showcase content on the home screen. But later , on we found with most of the user, didn't have city decided or place finalised.
Splash Screen & Walkthrough
Home Screen & Map View
Exploring the world, in the most fun manner
Wishlist
User Profile
During the user interviews, most of the users were solo travellers and non frequent travellers.People do seek recommendations and choices from friends but with consumption of reels and content consuumption, people also look upto digital nomads. They consume content of travel creators and user profiles. Explore section helps user explore places on broadly 3 levels :
City : Best curations/community discussions for a city/place : As per my research 35% user wanted itinarariy for a city. Like must go places, important contacts, local food, stays etc.
Creators/Curators : 30% users want to browse through places recommended/visited by specific people(i.e friends, travel creators on platform)
Based on vicinity : This is category included travellers want to visit places near by them and more like a last moment trip decision
Map View shows the recent activities nearby your location
Spot helps you discover place based on vibe of an event, alongside traditional location specific suggestions
Helps you discover places recommend by your social network via multiple filter for your map.
List view to scroll through all the places
Clubs are discussion forum for specific cities, kind of places and more. To get queries answered
Trending curators/ travel influencers which users follow or based on their travel activity are recommended.
Exclusive travel trips conducted by people to explore places.
Collections of guides and curations related to cities for user looking for city specific recommendations
Explore City let's user get highlights and important information related to city
Explore enables user to know about the city along with segregated informations based on multiple use cases like
Tourist spots
Guides contacts
Hostels/ Hotels suggestion
Food specific suggestions
Important phone numbers
Many travellers often looks at multiple paramaeters like internet connnectivity, pure veg(for families), health and hygiene etc.
Trending curators/ travel influencers which users follow or based on their travel activity are recommended.
Clubs are discussion forum for specific cities, kind of places and more. To get queries answered
Map View shows the recent activities nearby your location
To view this full case study, please open the link on desktop.
Wishlists are in app bookmark which user saves, user can visit this wishlists, create custom wishlists based on type of exploration. Users can also import bookmarks from other social apps like X(Twitter), Instagram and more(obviously keeping all privacy norms in check.)
User profile let's user browse user centric information like all the posts, curations, wishlists and other activity of user.
Stats tab serve as user' travel snapshot giving user different insights on their travel like travel taste, most favorite places etc
Likes showcases posts,curations, reviews liked by user, captures activity of user on platform
All curations of places and guides
Clubs are the travel communities which the user is member , Clubs also helps user host trip within same cities and among local
What's next ?
Interact with friends with engaging maps
In app interactions with well crafted experience
Brand guideline & landing page and marketing brand illustrations
That's all for now. Thanks for reading the case study.