Hotjot
Hotjot is an app to help people explore what’s happening nearby. I joined Hotjot team from the very beginning since April of 2019 and have been designing the entire app and participating with strategic decisions with the product and executive teams. The iOS app was firstly launched in the app store in September, 2019. We are still actively adding new features and updating the user experience.
To download: Download on App Store Hotjot website: View details
Project Summary
Background: Sean is a successful business owner and entrepreneur, he started a startup that focus on an app for people to explore what’s nearby. He had an idea of what the app is about, and I joined the team to start designing from scratch.
Problem: For people who constantly traveling, there’s no such a source for them to experience a local life. For people who live in a big city and want to go out, it’s hard for them to find out what’s going on nearby at that time either,
Solution: Design an app showing what’s happening nearby at a real time, and showing a detailed direction of how to get there.
Role: Lead Designer (50% UX, 50% UI)
Time: April, 2019 - Present
Team: Sean Maher (CEO, business owner), Vlad Zozulyak (Developer), IIya Kuznetsov (Developer), Marina (Product manager), Susan McGregor (Marketing)
Tools: Sketch, Pen & paper, Invision
Approach
As a startup, it’s very important to approach user-center design and to make products that are valuable to users and in line with the business. The design thinking method was definitely a bible to follow and we wanted to involved users in our entire process. However, as a startup that quickly wanted to have a product built to ask for investment, we also needed have the product built as soon as possible.
So Sean shared his perspective with me - how he has this idea and how he has been researching on the market - we decided to build the product first based on his business goal and MVP (Minimum Viable Products) development process . Then we would execute user testing during the test flight stage to validate the product and iterate the designs.
