DS Social is a web application designed for mobile and desktop. The target market is fisherman and hunters in North America. The goal is to have an all-in-one app for fisherman and hunters to make the most of the outdoors.
Phase one of the app is DS Social which is a community based social platform for like minded fisherman and hunters to connect and share their outdoor experiences. This phase was completed in 2022.
My role in this project was the Lead UI/UX Designer, I worked with a team of developers and engineers to bring this project to life.
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The company has an existing social app that had been developed names 'Lapared'. My process involved taking the current functional requirements and reworking and redesigning the app in a better way. My goal was to take the existing functionality of this app and apply it to their new company 'Digital Sportsman'. Starting with a competitor analysis to determine what other apps exist for the same market and have similar functionality. During the research phase I found other social media apps but there was no app that was targeted specifically to this group of hunters and fisherman.
Sitemaps created based on the existing Lapared site and existing functionality. Then slightly changed to match the new vision on the web app.
Sketching and mapping out user journey flows for both mobile and desktop helped me to find new ways of doing designing the app. I mapped out user stories and sketched dashboards and user flows to get an idea of the kind of layout and features that needed to be included on each page.
Creating wireframes in Figma for both mobile and desktop. At this stage the team was involved in talking through the user flows and providing their relevant feedback. A few rounds of iterations happened at this phase. It was very important to have the decision making team involved here as the app has more features coming in the future and we had to design with those new features in mind so that the end product would be designed in a way that the new features can be incorporated effortlessly.
Once the wireframes has been completed and everyone was happy with the flow of the app, I started working on the look and feel. I used Digital Sportsman Brand colours for the app and I found one simple and easy to read typeface that could be used across the entire app. By sticking to design principles and ensuring that each step and call to action is obvious to the user, I finally reached an end product design.
In my process I used Figma components to ensure that I could make quick universal changes across the entire app with just a few clicks.
This also sped up my work process and made space for clients to suggest changes in this part of the process.
Having constant brainstorming and feedback sessions with the team, to agree on certain use flow and design decisions and making updates as needed until we reached an agreement on the final phase one design to implement.
A few screenshots of my process can be seen below.
A complete design and a fully functional social application for fisherman and hunters to use.
