Bouncer

Designing an App for Drunk People

It’s Friday night and you live in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. You’re out at one of the local bars with your friends but your looking for a more exciting bar. With so many options, it's difficult for young people to know in advance how much a cover will be, how great the vibe is and who they will run into at the next bar. Users want to know more about the local bar scene before heading out on Friday night, and bars want visitors to know what they're offering so that you choose to party at their bar.

More Bars, More People, More Problems

With so many trendy cities that have a booming night-life, there are so many options for locals and tourists when choosing where to go out. Bars have very few outlets to inform visitors of their covers, deals and events. The long lines of people waiting to pay covers outside of the bar can be a hazard and with many visitors often being intoxicated the process can quickly become disorderly. Bar hopping young adults wants to maximize their night out on the town and waste as little time as possible. With most night life goers typically being intoxicated at some point during the night it wasa top priority that every aspect of these designs was user focused.

Creating User Personas

Before I could conceptualize how to solve a problem I needed to pin-point the potential users. Although I think this problem is faced by a vast age-range I chose to pay close attention to young adults in college and their late 20’s. I chose these groups because they typically indulge in night-life more often and are usually more keen on visiting busy bars that could potentially be crowded.

Who’s Solving the Problem?

There are similar apps looking to improve night-life, but only one that is looking to accomplish a similar goal. Through research I learned that while buying covers is beneficial, users did not find other features to be important or helpful. LineLeap was offering many solutions to multiple problems rather than honing in on perfecting one singular issue which was avoiding lines to enter bars.

Competitor Analysis Questions

• How are competitors granting entry?
• What service are they providing? 
• What are the main goals of the competitors? 
• How are businesses benefiting? 
• How are the competitor products monetized?

The Interviews

To begin my interview process, I selected 5 participants ranging from ages 21  - 29. All of the participants live in large cities that are known to have a very active bar scene. I compiled a list of questions that would help me understand user pain points. and successes. I also used this opportunity to gain a clear understanding of what my participants would consider a “successful night out”  and how their current experiences could be improved.

Synthesizing My Research

I chose to use my interview findings to create user journey maps. Based on the results of my user interviews I created user journey maps for both Marissa and James. The user journey map helps explore the user though process when planning a night out with friends. These User journey maps help visualize the decline in positive user emotion when they are met with long lines, poor bar experiences and expensive covers. Along with user journey maps, I created a van diagram, feature set and compiled POV as well as HMW statements.

Wireframes

Creating a feature set was a pivotal moment in understanding how I was going to approach the visual design for this product. I knew that my key features were paying for a cover, a scannable QR code, active location services and apple pay for quick and easy purchase. Being that this is a native iOS app I chose to take advantage of app design elements such as a toggle switch, navigation bar and drawers.

Branding

The first branding decision I made for this app was dark mode. I knew that this app would be a night-time interaction and decided that dark mode would be best for both accessibility and aesthetic. I chose to name the app Bouncer, to emphasize the concept of “bouncing around” bar-to-bar. The crown that lies within the “O” in Bouncer is meant to promote a V.I.P mentality when users skips the line  and are immediately granted access into the bar. I chose the color palette because I felt that the colors were exciting and reminiscent of bars and night clubs. The typography is similar to San Francisco which is a system font that was created for Apple products.

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High Fidelity Product - Final Round

This onboarding process was designed to affectively explain the purpose of the Bouncer application to new users. All 4 screens of the process clearly explain the main goals of the application and how they are achieved.

Aside from a change in button design, the biggest change among these screens was the friend badges and "online" representation in the friends banner. An integral part of this experience is choosing your next bar based on the locations of your friends that you add on Bouncer. The explore page not only shows local bars, but also shows friends who have chosen to use location services that are currently partying at the bars listed. These badges will allow users to have a better idea of which bars are the most popular in the moment and will know whether they want to attend or avoid those bars based on their friends locations.

Iterating on the bottom-sheets for these screens was a meticulous process that required a lot of design research. The main goal was to adhere to Apple Pay guidelines and create a clean, accessible design that would allow the sober or drunk user to seamlessly purchase a bar cover. The QR screen was designed larger to make it easier to scan in dark environments. When this screen is opened the screen brightness will automatically increase to full brightness to improve scanning efficiency. The green bar is a moving component which will glide back and forth horizontally which will protect bars and users from having a QR code used by someone other than the purchaser. The QR code would not be able to be scanned if used via screen shot and needs to be shown in its moving state via Apple Wallet or the application.

The following screens underwent many visual improvements. The friends list was made easier to read and the Covers tab of the application will now show the larger QR code and one previous QR code purchase. The one event was designed with a drunk user in mind. Users who want to look back and are unable to remember where they went and had the best time are able to find that information in the application.

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