When I joined Yelp in early 2018, the company had just set off on a journey of building personalization
into its user experience. Before any of that uniquely personal content could appear in the product, it
was my job to update the designs of the most highly trafficked paths at the start of a search: the home
screen and search results.
The goal was to make the suggested businesses and categories
on
Yelp feel personalized, relevant, and contextual. This manifested in a new photo driven header component
on the homescreen, unique business highlights within search results, and various experiments we ran that
promoted finding businesses that feel relevant to your search and preferences.
As a designer on the Search experience team I had to interact with every other product team at Yelp as search is the entryway to the bulk of Yelp's experience. This was a great vantage point to identify opportunities for separate teams to combine efforts and unify their desigs when it was obvious they had similar goals and needs. In a way my role was also a proto design systems designer as I had to ensure that every new component introduced could service multiple teams needs and scale.