Local.ch
The swiss phonebook
With more than 2.8 million downloads, the local.ch app is one of the most popular apps in Switzerland. Users can quickly find contact information for residents and additional information such as opening hours for businesses.
Bringing emotion to the function
I worked with the local.ch team for 3 months to re-design their IOS and Android applications. Up until that time, this mobile applications had only worked as a functional product. Thus, the main goal was to provide a beautiful user experience.
Emotional home screen
One of the main focus points of this project was the redesign of the homescreen. The new design is emotional, including a contextual image, personalised based on the user's location, and addresses the user needs with a prominent search and personalised categories.
Old iOS design until 2013.
Current iOS design.
Fast and efficient search
The search is the local.ch business principle. It has to be easy, fast, efficient and provide context-aware auto-complete.
Demo of a search.
Search field: placed it in the center of the screen, it's the most important element and easily reachable by the user thumbs.
Context-aware auto-complete: helps to guide the user and includes three types of suggestions: history, location and matching queries.
The restaurant guide
In order to attract more users to the local restaurant guide, the user's guidance was improve and the design refreshed.
Demo of the restaurant guide.
Book a table: with one click, a table can be booked directly from the local mobile app.
Restaurant ratings: up-to-date restaurant ratings and reviews shown individually for each restaurant.
Transitional user guidance: several animations were implemented to provide smooth transitions.
Consolidating design across all platforms
Parallel to the iOS redesign, the Android app was also rebrushed and restructured with the same new features.
Old Android design until 2013.
New Android design.
Collaboration & process
Our collaboration was based on concrete goals, tasks and deliverables. We were not only working for the client but also together with the client.
We worked in sprints, in which we would focus on improving a specific feature. The goal was to progressively update the existing app with an improved version. Starting from sketches, we worked together with the local.ch team to discuss business perspectives, interaction models and visual details.
Drawing from a meeting about new features.
Facts of success
The new design for Local.ch mobile app launched in 2013 and the team continues to progressively improving the app, mostly focusing in the restaurant guide.
“Working together with the local.ch mobile team allowed me to share and learn a lot about how to design for mobile and understand different technologies. ”