Problem: In the spring of 2014, a team leader in the advertising department approached the editorial and development teams with an idea: Build an ad-supported app that helps cigar fans find cigar-friendly locations.
Company: Cigar Aficionado
Project Date: 2014
Activities: User Persona, Content Model, UX Writing, Information Architecture, Content Design, Editing
Solution: The goal was to build an app that visualized the information from the magazine’s in-house database of cigar retailers and smoke-friendly venues so users could search it.
Process: Many of the businesses on the magazine’s in-house retailer list had little to no presence on Google My Business, and so there was an information gap. Users could not quickly determine whether or not a business actually allowed smoking on site.
To find out who would want such an app, I turned to the magazine’s dedicated Facebook followers, choosing eight to interview and get their feedback.
After the interviews, I was able to create three user personas of people who would likely want an app that guides them to smoke-friendly locales. These personas were then used to create user stories and content mapping ideas, which were then passed on to development.
When the product moved into its final testing phase, I reviewed the content to ensure it was accurate and provided feedback on the design.
Outcome: The web app version of Where To Smoke was launched in June with great success. Soon, hundreds of cigar-friendly places contacted the magazine asking to be included in the app’s database, and our advertising team was able to sell with no problem.
I was also able to study the analytics to help improve the product as we built native apps for both Apple and Android. These apps were launched in January 2015.
Unfortunately, in 2017 the Apple version of Where To Smoke was removed from the App store due to its tobacco-related content. The web and Android versions are still live.