“It’s like Yelp for East Village happy hours”
The Solution
Pitcher is an app that consolidates the best, most up-to-date happy hour information and deals in the East Village, while boosting business for bar owners and saving users time & money to plan their next night out.
The Problem
New York City is lacking a happy hour app that focuses on small businesses within neighborhood communities. Existing happy hour apps mainly target international and national markets, and those that do include New York City in their locations often lack users and effective design.
My Role
For this case study I participated in the following: Ideation, user personas, competitive analysis, storyboarding, user flow, task list, low fidelity prototyping, user testing, and high fidelity prototyping. This case study was joint effort with all group members contributing to each step in the process.
User Personas
Competitive Research
Existing happy hour apps that include New York City in their locations lack users and effective design. Because of this, we decided to analyze top-rated happy hour apps from other niche markets, along with comparative food and beverage apps. For competitors, we identified the happy-hour-apps Drinker's Edition and Schlouk Map, and we identified Too Good to Go and New York Brewers Association (NYBA) as comparative apps.
Following our research, some of the key opportunities we saw for Pitcher were: including a map and list view, user profiles, search filters, the ability to favorite a bar, user generated updates, and a monthly paid premium membership that offers exclusive happy hour deals from participating bars.
Storyboarding
Based on our competitive research, we began to create storyboards that demonstrated our personas completing different tasks. Some user tasks that we demonstrated were creating a premium account, redeeming a premium happy hour deal, and adjusting the filters to search for specific types of bars. Because business owners also make up a portion of our users, we drew out scenarios of them creating an account, creating a premium happy hour deal for their bar, and verifying their premium deal with premium users who visit their bar.
We used these storyboards to map out some of our user interface design, including our logo, the layout of our list and map view, user profiles, log-in pages, the premium happy hour deal redemption page, and the overall design aesthetic of the app. Our storyboards allowed us to begin drafting our user flow chart and then task list, eventually leading to the creation of our low fidelity prototype.
User Flow and Task List
By creating a comprehensive user flow and task list, we were able to identify what tasks were most crucial to the Pitcher user experience. In order to deduce what needed to be on the list, we walked through the flow of tasks one would complete to get the most out of using Pitcher.
Low Fidelity Prototype
With our flow chart and task list in mind, we created a comprehensive low-fidelity prototype that walked through all of the pages of the app and how the user would interact.
User Testing
Once the low-fidelity prototype was complete, we began user testing, focusing on our target user base. Following testing, changes included: a restructuring of the business owner interface, a redesign of the account page, a redesign of the bar information page, making a button for submitting user changes to a bar, and making redeeming a premium Pitcher deal more user-friendly and specific. We then reflected these changes in our high fidelity prototype.
High Fidelity Prototype
A high fidelity prototype was created for both the bar owner and the user using Adobe XD.
User Prototype
Owner Prototype
Design Decisions
We wanted to call back to the image of a bar sign, and to do that we decided to create a neon effect with the color palette we chose. For our logo we went with the image of a beer pitcher to plainly represent the app’s subject. We also chose for the app to exist in dark mode since it’s most likely to be used in the evening, so our logo’s neon effect is meant to light up a black phone screen.
Takeaways
We found that Pitcher is a viable addition to the happy hour app market and that there is a need for such an app in the East Village, an area popular for nightlife with numerous happy hour locations.
Pitcher stands out amongst competitors due to its localized focus and premium happy hour deals. Other apps target a national or international market, leaving out small businesses and neighborhood communities. By keeping within the boundaries of the East Village in New York City, Pitcher allows users to find a new favorite bar that fits their needs while supporting local businesses. Additionally, Pitcher only offers information specific to happy hours, unlike existing apps that provide general information and require digging to find anything happy hour specific. By providing happy hour information only and allowing for user-generated feedback, Pitcher successfully differentiates from its competition.
By offering a monthly $4.99 premium subscription with exclusive happy hour deals to paying customers, Pitcher will be able to grow revenue with potential to scale over time.
As Pitcher’s network effects grow, the app can expand to include additional neighborhoods, cities, and states. While Pitcher is free for bar owners, implementing paid advertising opportunities for owners to target users is way to add an additional revenue stream in the future.