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UX / Product Design

Yelp

Make Yelp a place worth coming back to.

A concept redesign of Yelp’s mobile app, made with a five-person team at Design Innovation Illinois. I led the team as design lead, from research to the final screens.

Student concept, not affiliated with Yelp

My Role
Design Lead
Team
Sebastian, Ryan, Jordan, Sara & Riddhima
Timeline
January – May 2026
Tools
Figma
Yelp redesign concept screens

Overview

The Problem

Yelp’s monthly app users fell from 33 million to 29 million between 2022 and 2024. Finding a place takes too much scrolling, people doubt whether reviews are real, and there’s no community to keep them coming back.

The Redesign

Five tabs, each with one job: Home, Explore, Create, Map and Profile. Friends and trusted reviewers come first, search and filters get faster, and the map becomes a place to discover, not just a list of pins.

My Role

I was design lead for a five-person team. I set our three checkpoints, split the app into sections across the team and kept the screens consistent from research to the final prototype. I designed the Home tab myself: the feed, highlights, messages and the AI assistant.

Process

From research to a new structure, wireframes, an A/B test and final screens.

  1. Research

    Find Why People Leave.

    We mapped pain points in the current app: ads and sponsored posts, a bland interface, settings and support hidden away, no personalized recommendations, and no way to tell if a reviewer actually visited.

    Then we scored five apps people use to find places, and interviewed people with questions in seven groups: search and discovery, social features, UI and navigation, reviews, customer support, maps, and customization.

    Five apps people use to find places, scored out of 5.
    FeatureGoogleBeliTripAdvisorTikTokTrustpilot
    UI & navigation54444
    Visual design & branding5454.54
    Key features4.6343.53.5
    Reviews & feedback4.253.5454
    Customer support54.5353
    Personalization44.534.52
    Overall4.653.923.834.423.42
    Five apps people use to find places, scored out of 5. Green is strong (4 to 5), yellow is okay (3 to 3.9), red is weak (below 3).
  2. Synthesis

    Three Insights, One Objective.

    We wrote down what people told us, then affinity-mapped it to find what kept coming up. Three insights became the base of the redesign.

    1. UI & Navigation

      Navigation

      Key insight

      People want to find and filter relevant places fast, not sift through cluttered layouts and irrelevant results.

    2. Social Features

      Social

      Key insight

      People want recommendations from friends and trusted communities, not anonymous strangers with no context.

    3. Reviews / Feedback

      Reviews

      Key insight

      People want to trust that ratings are genuine and recent, instead of second-guessing reviews that may be fake or outdated.

    4. Ads

      Sponsored listings look like real results and clutter the page.

    5. Details

      Long reviews skip what matters: wait time, price, portions and allergy info.

    6. Business owners

      Owners can’t see how reviews get filtered, or how best to respond.

    Four personas, a high-school athlete who travels for games, a college student who picks the spot for his friends, a retiree new to town and a local business owner, each got a journey map that kept the insights tied to real situations.

    Overall Objective

    How might we streamline the Yelp experience so that discovery, trust and community make it feel like a place worth coming back to?

  3. Direction

    Five Tabs, Each With One Job.

    The current app splits tasks across Search, Projects, Assistant, Collections and Me, and keeps contributions, community and settings in one long list. The new structure gives each task a predictable home, adds a tab for creating, and turns the map into its own destination.

    Before

    1. Search
      • Quick search options
      • Search bar
      • Recommended
      • Recent local reviews
    2. Projects
      • Categories
      • Start project
      • Recommended
    3. Assistant
      • AI chat
    4. Collections
      • Featured
      • My collections
      • Following
    5. Me
      • Notifications / share
      • Add review / photo
      • Recently viewed
      • Contributions
      • Community
      • Activity
      • Account

    AfterNew tab

    1. Home
      • Stories
      • Reviews
      • Messages
      • Trending spots
      • AI assistant
    2. Explore
      • Search spots
      • Filters
      • Location review
      • Compare
    3. Create
      • Review
      • Story
      • Thread
    4. Map
      • Discover
      • Map layers
      • Search
      • Filters
    5. Profile
      • Profile header
      • My contributions
      • My settings
      • My history
      • Support
      • Account settings
    Before: Five Tabs With Overlapping Jobs. After: Five Tabs, With New Create and Map Tabs.
  4. Wireframes

    Draft Every Tab in Mid-Fidelity.

    For our second checkpoint, each of us wireframed our tab in grayscale before adding any color: a home feed of highlights and reviews, the AI assistant, a map you can open anytime, and a profile with history and contributions grouped.

    Mid-fi home: community highlights and highlighted reviews.
    Home
    Mid-fi AI assistant: How can I assist, with three prompt buttons.
    AI Chat
    Mid-fi map: a full-screen map with layers and search at the bottom.
    Map
    Mid-fi profile: stats, quick actions, history and contributions.
    Profile
    Mid-fidelity wireframes from our second checkpoint.
  5. A/B Testing

    Test How People Leave the Map.

    Once the map became its own tab, getting back out of it had to feel natural. We compared five versions: keeping the navbar, an X button, a back button, and two with search at the bottom.

    We carried the version that keeps the navbar into the final design.

    1. Map with the five-tab navbar at the bottom and a floating assistant button.

      Navbar PresentChosen

      The five tabs stay at the bottom, so every part of the app is one tap away.

    2. Full-screen map with an X button beside the search bar and the assistant in a bottom sheet.

      X Button

      The tabs hide for a full-screen map, and an X in the corner closes it.

    3. Full-screen map with a Home back button beside the search bar.

      Back Button

      The same full-screen map, with a labeled Home button to leave.

    4. Map with search moved into the bottom sheet and a Home back button at the top.

      Bottom Search 1

      Search moves down into the bottom sheet, within reach of your thumb.

    5. Map with bottom search, a small back arrow and a slimmer sheet.

      Bottom Search 2

      Bottom search again, with a smaller back arrow and a slimmer sheet.

    Five ways back from the map. We kept the navbar.

Final Design

The finished app: a social home feed, a business page built for deciding and a map to explore.

The new home: highlights from people you follow, featured reviews and previously visited places.
Home: highlights and reviews from people you follow
A business page for Boba Blorb: photo, rating, price, distance, actions, featured dishes and reviews.
Business page: everything to decide in one place
The map with the hot spots layer showing where places are popular.
Map: switch on layers like hot spots

Screen 1 of 3

Put People Before Ads

Home leads with highlights from friends and featured reviews, not sponsored posts.

Keep Deciding Details Together

Rating, price, distance and featured dishes sit together on every result and business page.

Before & After

How each part of the app changed, across the whole team’s redesign.

  1. The current home screen: category icons, then large sponsored posts and ads.
    Current
    The new home: highlights, featured reviews and previously visited places.
    Updated Home
    A full-screen highlight: a friend’s photo of a meal with like, comment and share.
    Highlights
    Messages: pinned and recent chats with friends about places to try.
    Messages

    Home My Design

    Before: Ads and sponsored posts fill the feed, with little real value.

    After: Highlights and featured reviews from people you follow, and messages with friends about where to go next.

  2. The current Yelp Assistant: a plain chat for one business, with a text box and keyboard.
    Current
    The new Yelp Assistant: How can I assist, with Trending Spots and Date Night Spot prompts.
    Start
    Typing a question: Best Mexican food in the area?
    Ask
    Yelp Assistant answering with nearby Mexican spots, each with a rating and a short summary.
    Answer

    AI Assistant My Design

    Before: A plain chat that only answers questions about one business.

    After: An assistant for the whole app, with quick prompts like Trending Spots and Date Night, that answers with real places, ratings and short summaries.

  3. The current search: a typed query with a long list of suggestions.
    Current
    The new search: recent searches and popular suggestions.
    Updated Search
    Filters for price, rating, distance and open now.
    Filters
    Results for boba with rating, price and distance on every card.
    Results

    Explore

    Designed by Jordan

    Before: Searching means typing and scrolling a long list of suggestions.

    After: Recent and popular searches, quick filters for price, rating, distance and open now, and results that show the deciding details.

  4. The current business page: photo header, offers, order buttons and tabs.
    Current
    The new business page: photo, rating, price, distance, actions, featured dishes and reviews.
    Updated Page
    A menu with tabs for milk teas, fruit teas, specialties and snacks.
    Menu

    Business Page

    Designed by Jordan

    Before: Offers, ordering and tabs crowd the page before the reviews.

    After: Rating, price and distance up top, then featured dishes, a full menu and customer reviews.

  5. The current review screen: a star rating and an empty text box.
    Current
    The new create flow: a full-screen camera to snap a photo, with Review and Photos modes.
    Updated Create

    Create

    Designed by Ryan

    Before: Writing a review starts with a blank form.

    After: Start with the camera: snap a photo of the place, then turn it into a review or add it to your photos.

  6. The current map: pins and a single result card, reached only after a search.
    Current
    The new map with the hot spots layer.
    Hot Spots
    The map with places friends recently visited and favorited.
    Friends
    The map showing saved locations.
    Saved

    Map

    Designed by Sara

    Before: The map only opens after a search, with pins and little else.

    After: A map tab you can open anytime, with layers for hot spots, places your friends visited and your saved spots.

  7. The current profile: stats, then prompts and a long list of sections.
    Current
    The new profile: followers, quick actions, history and contributions.
    Updated Profile
    Share Profile with a QR code, link and download.
    Share Profile
    A saved collection, Best NYC Eats, with places and photos.
    Collections

    Profile

    Designed by Riddhima

    Before: Contributions, community and settings sit in one long list.

    After: History, contributions and settings grouped, a QR code to share your profile, and collections of saved places.

Outcome & Reflection

What Was Delivered

Research with five competitor scores, interviews, four personas and journey maps; a new five-tab structure; mid-fidelity wireframes; an A/B test of the map; and high-fidelity prototype flows for every tab, presented across three checkpoints.

What Comes Next

Test the final flows with Yelp users and measure what the redesign is for: how fast people find a place, and whether highlights from friends make reviews easier to trust.