Introducing Hoods: a spiritual guide to your next barhop…
…just kidding. This is the story of how I totally kept my cool while redesigning the User Experience of Hoods Guru: an app that gives you an inside scoop on the best events in the city.
When I was first assigned this project, Hoods Guru was a mood-based event discovery app available exclusively on the Google Play store in Beta stage. The idea was to help people party harder, better, faster, stronger.
What we were given
Craig from Hoods Guru came to brief my team on a cold Canadian February afternoon with a perfect pitch. (INSERT PERFECT PITCH) He said that the concept for the app came from his travels to South America, where he realized how difficult it can be to find authentically local events without knowing the city. He spoke of his trip through Argentina, of having cold beers in the tropical midday heat, meeting the beautiful locals, and dancing until the coppery sun skimmed the horizon.
Did he actually mention any dancing? All I know is I was sold. Craig wanted his users to rely on their feelings and moods to guide them through a night out. He wanted passion and spontaneity and a rallying cry to action. Another major bonus was that in this hippie spirit, he was very open-minded. He left us with a lot of freedom in terms of direction, and trusted us in the redesign of his website. With a team of two UI- and two graphic designers, this was (dance) music to our ears. We could not wait to get started.
Logistics
Once the haze of beautiful storytelling wore off, we started analyzing the data we were given, only to be pulled back to reality. As romantic as the backstory of Hoods Guru was, it lived in a crowded space: Google and Facebook being the obvious elephants in the room, but also Bandsintown, Ticketmaster, Phind, Dojo… the list goes on. The market was saturated.
To gather some intel of our own, we bombarded our contacts with surveys. That’s where the “fun” started. As it turns out:
- 86% mostly use their mouths or Facebook to share their life with friends
- Nobody is actually that spontaneous
- 71% plan for events 2 weeks in advance
- 58% use an iPhone
HECK. Long story short, the core function of this app needed some work. If people need 2 weeks to commit to attending an event, then searching by mood doesn’t really make sense (if you’re in the same mood for two weeks, seek help). If our app was on Android, then why are 58% of target millennials using iPhones?
Another glaring issue — our users didn’t understand the “Guru” part of “Hoods Guru”. I asked people what they thought of when they heard “Hoods Guru”; most people thought of meditation, some thought about hoodies. Great. We wanted to create a feeling of exclusivity with this app, and an energy that speaks to new experiences. We decided to focus on the word Hoods. “What’s up in your hood?” already sounds like something a cool person would say (cool people are weird). We also gathered some good sample of data on the top 3 types of events people like to attend (in this order):
- anything to do with music
- sport ball events
- arts and culture
Also one person mentioned weddings as their favourite event to attend. I did consider making a location based wedding crashing app, but I digress.
The majority of people we surveyed were working in business/finance, so I thought they would be the last ones to attend a “hipster” Parkdale show, but turns out they secretly wanted in! How interesting!
Well la dee da!
With the sports industry already having a tight grip on their own promotion, we decided to delve deeper into the murky waters of artsy events. If you think about it — Facebook and Google cover pretty much everything, the only catch is that you need to know what you’re searching for. I once attended a trip to an observatory/winery at night to watch galaxies through a telescope. Facebook has not suggested events like that to me before or since.
With this insight, we re-focused Hoods on indie event discovery. People love going to secret graffiti galleries, checking out a good band that no one knows of yet. How cool would it be to say that you saw the Chili Peppers before they got big? The idea was to make this app into a guide of the obscure, unique side of your city. Imagine turning to your friend on a Friday night and saying: “Have you checked Hoods?”
We decided to go beyond the client’s ask, and create a multi-platform experience for Hoods, to help them create a user base. Our site had to be fully functional on it’s own, serving as a platform for users to rely on for the inside scoop and be able to share with friends, while the app is coming out of Beta.
The part you’ve been scrolling for
In a team of 6, the assignment had to be split between the app design and web. We specifically chose to do an iPhone version of the app, to tend to the big portion of our target market as iOS users. I was working closely with our UI team to make sure both experiences were congruent with each other, and they were… Until the day before our presentation. Horrifyingly, we realized that we had slowly but surely gotten rid of company colours. Ooops. That’s what happens when you give four visual designers all the creative freedom!
Did I mention we only had 3 weeks for this?
Now, let this be known: I loved our redesign with magenta as an accent colour. Our UI team had carefully chosen magenta after lots of testing to show energy and a liveliness that we wanted Hoods to represent. The lesson to learn here, though, is that sometimes the client’s needs come first. Pressed for time and very frustrated, I was determined to help my team mates stay focused and avoid killing each other. Armed with a box of freshly baked goods from Portland Variety (holla!), I put all my energy on supporting the UI team during the final hurdle, and getting shit done quickly. To be efficient with our limited time, we asked Craig which colour he preferred, and when he chose the original orange (damn it), we relented.
As a creative person, the hardest part of this assignment for me was holding my “creative freedom” at bay. It’s easy to go wild with visions of a product when you have a thousand ideas a minute and three more artists to bounce off. An invaluable lesson I’ve learned, is how to support my team members while staying aligned with the end goal.
Huge shout out to my Hoods team for seeing this project through.
Here are links to both the prototypes, if you wish to see the final designs.
Web: https://invis.io/CSAHBXLDH
Mobile: https://invis.io/7UAGILR4Z
Time to party.
