Lokal

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  Design Overview

Inspiration

During the pandemic lockdown, many small businesses were forced to operate at a reduced capacity or shutdown affecting their cash flow, traction, and employees. In contrast, large retailers had the financial resources to be resilient in the pandemic lockdowns by shifting operations to deliver their products and services safely. Small businesses are not able to keep up with large retailers and have the same resources in order to adapt to the new restrictions and methods of delivery. Our team wanted to build a tool that would help consumers gain awareness of the small businesses around them and contribute to the maintaining of their healthy bottom lines. In order to accomplish this, we designed Lokal, a small business locator, and support tool.

What it does

Lokal is an IOS application, a design concept that allows consumers to locate, explore, and support local businesses around them. Consumers can create their own accounts, curate their favorite categories, and actively search based on search parameters. Consumers can rate their experience with the local business, and therefore support their SEO and reputation on the application.

On the business side, businesses can create their own profile and display their products and services. They can upload content, post user reviews, and display their business on the user map where consumers can locate them. In addition, businesses can post their "story" or their contribution to local industry. By doing so, they can justify their social contribution to the neighborhood they are a part of.

How we built it

Our team used Figma to create our initial branding concepts, our user personas, and the prototype for the application. Figma's wireframing functionality allowed us to create a fully working IOS simulator that simulated our application. We used Miro for brainstorming diagrams and quick note-taking. Our Google Doc document outlines our design ideation and final design.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges we faced during this competition was creating a common design for the app. It was hard for us as a group to agree on a specific color scheme and overall design. We worked through this by having each member voice their opinion on what they think would be best, and together picking the right colors that combined well together.

Although we have been living in an online world for some time now, there are still restraints that come with it and at times it is difficult to communicate all day over a call whereas in person this communication comes easier. With this, initially splitting up workload was also difficult, but we effectively created a detailed plan that helped us overcome this.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Going into this competition, some members of our team were not as advanced in online UI tools such as Figma. We used this as an opportunity to grow our skills and to further enhance our knowledge of UI/UX. We were proud of our quick adjustment to this tool and to the UI/UX design techniques that allowed our idea to come to life. Our team spent a considerable amount of time ideating, researching ideal design strategies, and thinking of a branding formulation that empowers our application.

What we learned

We truly learned the importance of giving back to local communities and the need of supporting small businesses. Throughout this project, we heard of businesses we were completely unfamiliar with prior to this, and this showed us that there are so many good businesses that are simply unadvertised.

We also learned how to efficiently and effectively create a UI design with Figma that aimed to strategically use color and create purpose with each design.

What's next for Lokal

We wish to grow Lokal and transfer our UI design into an actual, functioning application. We want to make Lokal a real startup that can help other local and small businesses grow!

Built With

• figma
• miro