Toast
Mobile
Project Overview
As the sole designer on the founding team of Toast, I collaborated with the Yooka team to craft a visionary solution to the local discovery conundrum. Our brainchild, Toast, emerged as a crowd-powered city guide poised to revolutionize the way people explore their local surroundings. At its core, Toast sought to enable users to discover the perfect spot based not on standardized ratings, but on the authentic recommendations of locals intimately familiar with their neighborhoods.
The Process
My involvement encompassed a host of responsibilities that spanned continents and disciplines. While situated in Manila, I collaborated closely with our developers to shape the digital product and also undertook the role of brand identity creator for this new venture. My design process began with drafting user journeys for both the website and mobile app, with a predominant focus on refining the mobile experience first.
I crafted initial wireframes based on hypotheses drawn from competitive research involving local search and discovery platforms, Q&A forums, and insights gathered from our previous food scavenger hunt app. I then turned these wireframes into interactive InVision prototypes, which were then used to conduct user testing. The insights from these efforts influenced my next iteration of designs and resulted in the MVP for our beta launch in Manila,PH.
Branding & Story
I wanted make a logo that would fit the brand story. After some sketches and some broken pencil tips I put together a few elements that attempt to perfectly explain what toast was. The two keywords that stood out in the brand story were "moods, and feelings" I took those two words and stretched them as far I could. With helpful inspiration from the ever so popular mood ring. Element one adapts to the idea of moods being represented by gradients.
The second element emerged from the synonymous term "VIBE." Inspired by this, I drafted the concept of transmitting vibration waves as visual expression of the energetic currents. This discovery helped in the creation of the new brand symbol one that goes beyond its role as just a representation of the brand to become a functional component deeply embedded within the platform itself.
