TRIPPLAR
An innovative way to connect consumers to small, local businesses in San Jose
ABOUT
Type
Mobile App, Student Led Start-Up
In 2020, we have witnessed losses of epic proportions. Local, small businesses throughout the nation are bearing some of the heaviest burdens with nearly a thousand small businesses closing permanently each day.
As students, we have been working to see how our actions can contribute to the empowerment and support of small business owners of San Jose.
Tripplar creates a new platform that effectively personalizes, socializes, and digitizes the the "window-shopping" experience in the age of Covid-19.
My Role
UX Team Leader, Co-Founder
Collaborators
UX - Jolyn Tran
Engineering Team
Business Development Team
Software
Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
Duration
2 weeks
EARLY RESEARCH
created by the Tripplar team
Survey
We released a survey in order to gauge our local community's interest in supporting small businesses and how they currently learn about their local businesses. We received 67 respondents with ages from 18-60 years old.
When asked "Are you interested in shopping at small businesses more often?"
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87% answered "Yes"
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0% answered "No"
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12.5% answered "It doesn't make a difference to me"
When asked "What prevents you from shopping at more small businesses?"
We received a wide variety of responses, the top answers being
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"Chain stores are more accessible"
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"Big brand names are more familiar to me"
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"It is too expensive"
When asked "Where have you found the small businesses you shop at?"
We received again a wide variety of responses, the top answers (in order) being
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"Word of Mouth"
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"Social Media"
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"Noticed Physical Store"
Based on these responses, we determined that people are interested in shopping small, but need an easier way to discover and become familiarized with local, family owned businesses.
PROJECT GOALS
1. to encourage South Bay Area residents to engage with and learn the unique stories behind local stores and retailers
2. to empower businesses and business owners while also relieving some of the "pandemic pressure"
PERSONAS
Meet Julie
Julie is the owner of a hair salon that she just opened herself with the money she's been saving. Her salon offers both hair styling services and hair and beauty products for sale. But in the midst of the pandemic, Julie is having trouble obtaining new clients and selling new products. She is worried of having to close up shop.
Frustration: Julie wants to find another way to connect with new clients on a more personal level and have a way to compete with big name brands that sell similar products such as Target and Ulta.
Goal: She would like to be able to share her story and salon with a wider audience who are willing to switch up their shopping habits.
Meet Peter
Peter is a graduate student who is studying full time from home. Since the start of the pandemic, he has been using Amazon a lot. He has heard a lot in the news about the affect of COVID on small businesses, and wants to try to shop small.
Frustration: Peter has a hard time learning about interesting small businesses in his area. He normally hears about them through word-of-mouth, but he has been social distancing and not spending too much time with people outside his household.
Goal: He would like to be able to easily see the local businesses in his area to make it easier for him to find small business alternatives in his normal shopping.
SOME INSPIRATION
We needed ways to differentiate ourselves from competitors such as Yelp, and wanted to design the app in a way that made sure each business was considered by the user.
We also wanted to make sure that business owners had a feature as well, in order for users to put a face to each business. Small businesses are the heart and soul of their communities, and we wanted to showcase their stories.
We took inspiration from dating apps such as Bumble and Tinder, which feature swiping mechanisms that ensure the user's focus remains on one subject at a time.
USER'S FLOW BRAINSTORM
An early draft of our user flow. We knew we wanted something simple and feasible that our engineers could realistically tackle in such a short amount of time.
We originally included a socialization aspect
(shown in the pink highlighted section), but
removed it for our first iteration.
WIREFRAME AND USER TESTING
My team conducted user testing on 6 participants
We asked them to do tasks and asked questions at the end. This was their feedback:
Likes
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intuitive to use
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the feature of the owners
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the concept
Wants
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more information on each business
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add filter options for different types of businesses
(on both the swipe screen and user profile screen)
FINAL SCREENS
Onboarding
Personal Profile
REFLECTION
This has been an incredible learning experience; this is the first time I have collaborated with not only a team of engineers working to bring this platform to life, but also with a business development team working to gain users and market Tripplar before its release on Test Flight.
Working with engineers has meant compromising features and changing design choices to fit with what is possible in the time that we had. Changing the design from what would have been our ideal end product to what is now our minimum viable product has led me to be more knowledgeable about engineering and understanding the importance of compromise, communication, and respect when it comes to cross team collaboration.
WHAT'S NEXT
Being able to release this product will not only be rewarding but will also be instrumental to my growth as a designer. Hearing feedback from real users will give me insight into the difference between what works in theory and what works in reality.
Our team hopes to focus on research next in order to determine our priorities for the next iteration. What is actually useful for our users (for both consumers and businesses on the platform)? Are people using our app? If they are, what is working? If they're not, what isn't? Our team will be continuing to iterate and improve, working to create a product that will incorporate itself into the daily lives of users and stand the test of time after the pandemic.
LINKS
Publication:
New Student-Developed App Fosters Small Business Recovery
Social Media:
Tripplar Instagram
2.0 Version Figma including a redesign and new features:
Swiping