An entrepreneurial effort to develop, brand, and launch a new social media app.

I was a co-lead on the project, working on overall app development and marketing strategy while leading the branding & UX design.

IDEA

As young adults living in New York City, me and my friends sometimes found ourselves a little uninformed when it came to finding a place to go out at night. Sure, you have Yelp and Google for business reviews—but why wasn't there a way to see what a place was like in real time? How do we know how crowded a place is, or what kind of people frequent it, without taking the time to actually travel there and see for ourselves?

Enter Tourrent.

The idea was simple—a social media app that allows you to post real-time stories, but attached to locations rather than individual people or brands. People already share their lives on social media, so why not add in location as another layer of data? All of that content could be compiled to provide a snapshot of what's happening at any given venue or place of business.

If you see a lot of stories posted from a location, you can infer that it's probably crowded. And you can get a sense of what the vibe is like, based on what you're seeing.

In-situ mockups of the Tourrent UI while in-use.

DEVELOPMENT

Building a mobile app from the ground-up meant that this was more just a branding or design exercise. I developed detailed wireframes and mockups so that we had the entire user experience mapped out, which was invaluable when it came to actually developing a functioning prototype. I also developed presentations, business cards, and various pitch materials for meetings with investors and potential partners in bringing the product to market.