App critique | Yelp

This is part of a month long personal challenge to critique an app every day. It’ll be short and scrappy.

Why

Outlining the why of an app before opening it is important. It grounds the critique in higher level principles and user problems.

Yelp is the #3 app in food & drink in the App store. It appears under the title “Yelp Food, Delivery & services”. I downloaded the app 3 years ago after seeing a partner fire it up to find restaurants nearby, while on a trip. I often use it in cojunction with Foursquare and Google maps — the 3 apps live next to each other on my phone — to get a fuller picture of my options in a certain area. I’ve used Yelp’s website to find doctors and services but somehow never used the website to find restaurants or the app to find services. The app store page outlines the app’s use cases in order:

1. Order delivery or takeout
2. Hire a home pro & compare quotes instantly
3. Make a reservation
4. Find restaurants anywhere
5. Browse dishes & more
6. Book an appointment
7. Message businesses directly

Reading the messaging and looking at screenshots, as a user, my conceptual model of the app and the list of features start to form: I expect a prominent search feature (“find restaurants”), a menu-based in-app delivery system (“order delivery”) as well as a booking system (“make a reservation”). I also expect a messaging system given the emphasis on comparing quotes, hiring pros and messaging businesses directly.

In my mind, at this stage: Yelp is a Yellow pages on steroids. It enables users to find and interact with small businesses around them (quotes, ordering, reservations, messaging etc.). It’s search engine for and an API on top of the small business world. This is the goal I’ll keep in mind as I continue critiquing the app. Is Yelp delivering on these two promises?

A caveat here. Because of how fully-features it is however, a little voice inside expects it to do everything reasonably well rather than any one thing exceptionally. I can imagine users wanting to download the app and start searching as soon as they do. So I expect the search bar to be the central navigational modality. I also expect some way to discover the different use cases (services, restaurants, booking, ordering etc.).

Who

I perceive Foursquare as appealing to a younger audience and Google maps to a more tech-savvy one — one able to find and leverage the “explore” feature. To me, Yelp appeals to the rest. In a sense, it is less differentiated.

When & where

What are the mindset, feelings and general context in which users are likely to use Yelp? Users either have a lot of time (planning for a restaurant outing) or very little (hungry and want food). Yelp’s UX should cater to both.

What

Onboarding: Yelp starts off with a red screen and their slogan “we know just the place”. Playful and friendly. The second screen asks me to enable location. The illustration uses light pastel colors. I feel at ease. I also see the focus on small local businesses given the two small buildings next to the big location dot. I already feel some clumsiness in the design language: The size of the font used for the slogan is different from any other I see on this screen.

Having enabled location, the illustration has changed to display a new storefront between the two small businesses. I also have a few options to log in or sign up to the app. I continue with Facebook.

How does the app explain itself: I’m met with a bottom sheet suggesting I “find restaurants offering takeout nearby” and two buttons to either see these or not. I dismiss it and land on the main screen — the first tab, which is called “search”.

App tone: Scrolling down, I see a bear appear under the search bar. Continuing to pull puts the bear in a rocker and sends them to outer space. Again: Playful and friendly. The icons straddle 2D and 3D which further communicate the general tone of the app.

Information architecture: The tab bar contains 5 icons with text — which helps avoid the mystery meat navigation problem. The bulk of the functionality seems to be in the “search” tab however. The “search” tab alone delivers on the Yelp promise outlined above — a search engine and an API for the small business world. “Activity” is ambiguous (Is it my or others’ activity? What kind of activity?), “Me” is confusing (What value would a profile add in such a utilitarian app?), “Collections” is a familiar concept. “More” confirms my initial impression of the app being too fully-featured. So much so that its functionality doesn’t fit into 5 navigation bars.

Choosing a use case: For the sake of time, I will focus on how Yelp delivers on the promise stated earlier by diving into the journey of a user trying to find the best restaurant for take out on a Sunday night.

In the main “search” tab, I’m given a few options under the search bar which align with the use cases mentioned above. There’s an odd invitation with a heart asking me to “add preferences”. The blue text is a signifier — this text will link to another surface. It is less understandable however than a button. That it takes 5th of the screen means it’s important. It makes me think Yelp data analysts probably found a causality between users who informed their preferences and those who retain best. The “collections” tab is one the 5 main tabs likely for a similar reason.

Scrolling down on that screen, I can find 3 carrousels with several cards each. As I click on different elements on the screen, I find out the following:

1. Clicking on “restaurants”, I see the search bar auto-fill with the word and animate upwards revealing a map of where I am and red dots representing the restaurants nearby.
2. The “classic choices” section on the main “search” screen accomplish something similar. Clicking on “Staying In? Order pizza” fires up a search for Pizza delivery. The “filters” has a blue number “1” inside to indicate a filter was selected and the “offers delivery” pill is active as well.

In both cases, I can see the search field shows both “what” (restaurants, pizza delivery) I’m searching for and, in a lighter font, “where” my search is operating. I realize Yelp is using the first screen, in part, to teach me about the features and power of its search functionality.

The icon on the right of “current location” symbolizes a list. Clicking on it pulls the list up and transforms it into a map. Clicking on the map shows the map again. Though this pattern is very clear on Foursquare, it’s confusing on Yelp because the list is a bottom sheet that expands and hides the map, rather than a new page that replaces it. As a user, I don’t feel I’m in “list mode”. The best execution here is Google map’s take: Google uses no icon next to the search field. USers can dismiss the bottom sheet by pulling it down. That, in turn, shows the words “show list”.

Let’s say the user wants to eat Thai food tonight. Searching for “Thai food” in the search bar triggers a rescaling of the map. It’s not as smooth an animation as the subtle bounciness of the bottom sheet. That contributes to my feeling Yelp isn’t a coherent whole. The fact that the cuisine iconography has a different style from the navigation bar icons adds to that incoherence.

Looking for “Thai food” also dismisses a UI element that was present in the “Restaurants” search: A carrousel of icons symbolizing different types of cuisine. This carrousel is absent for any other search in Yelp (even delivery and take out). This makes me think restaurant search — that is for the purpose of eating out IRL — must be the number one use case of the app. The team must have made an effort to accomodate users and make that search even more straightforward.

The component for each restaurant shows the rating, distance, address, price, cuisine. The action button is clear. However, botht he button and the last line of description for each restaurant differ from one to the other (“call to order” vs “order now” and “get takeout delivery” vs “trending”). More so, some restaurants have allergen and dietary preference information (gluten-free, vegetarian etc.) while others don’t. This introduce a lack of predictability as I scroll.

Improvements

Yelp is the Amazon of food apps, in that it caters to a long tail of users and a large diversity of use cases — the “more” tab reveals options such as “deals” and “Events”! Using the app as a non-power user leaves me with the impression that I am missing out on a lot of functionality.

1. Simplifying the information architecture: “Activity” could be folded under “Search” and “collections” under “Me”. I understand the importance of users contributing to Yelp with reviews, pictures and check ins. In my experience however, taking more space in the app — in the form of a tab — does not resolve this tension.
2. The “Me” tab could house notifications (asking for reviews based on restaurants visited or orders placed).
3. “Collections” similar to Google maps could be more embedded in the app. The bookmark icon could live in the list view instead of the restaurant page (at the top next to the share button).
4. The iconography, font and spacing on the restaurant page is starkingly different from the rest of the app. Introducing more coherence could improve user sentiment.

Add ons

1. Yelp’s business model depends on advertising. The placement, both in lists and on maps, of sponsored results and restaurants is crucial to the business.