Year on Yelp

Project at a Glance

The Opportunity

Contributors wanted to see what their effort added up to

Year on Yelp gave contributors an annual view of the people and businesses they helped through reviews, photos, and other activity. Research with previous recipients showed that people valuedpersonalized data, their most popular content, and the ability to revisit the year like a journal.

One participant explained why appreciation mattered:

“I loved what this did at the end of the year to help reinforce that we contribute to the site for public service. Sharing the impact and feeling appreciated goes a long way for brand affinity.”

The existing product worked, but the long scrolling page made individual moments blend together. Earlier iterations also reused much of the same visual structure, which limited the sense of anticipation expected from an annual recap.

The 2023 opportunity was to make each achievement feel distinct while building a format that Yelp could reuse and extend in future years.

The strategic choice

The team considered maintaining the existing experience, expanding the audience to non-contributors, or investing in a new contributor experience. With limited resources and other contribution projects competing for capacity, we focused on current contributors and madea one-time investment in a scalable story format.

The product goals were to:

• Celebrate the impact contributors had on other people and local businesses
• Create a memorable annual brand moment
• Encourage sharing without losing the path back to contribution
• Make future modules and yearly refreshes easier to add

My Role

Product design became creative direction

The project needed a shared idea before illustration, animation, and copy could move in the same direction. I helped create that clarity across a team of more than ten partners.

My responsibilities

• Frame the experience: Translate product goals and user insights into a story structure for the annual recap.
• Lead theme development: Facilitate workshops, define evaluation criteria, and guide the team toward one creative direction.
• Design the system: Establish the story interaction, module framework, qualification logic, and sharing experience.
• Coordinate production: Create the creative brief and work with illustrators, animators, content designers, engineers, and marketing partners through delivery.

I remained responsible for the coherence of the whole experience while specialists developed the final illustrations, animation, copy, and campaign assets.

Three Design Moves

Design Move 1

Turn a Recap Into a Story

The previous vertical experience presented the year's data as one continuous page. The 2023 redesign used a horizontal, card-by-card story inspired by familiar social formats.

Design decisions

• One moment per card: Give each achievement enough space to feel meaningful.
• Simple story controls: Let people move forward, return to a previous card, or pause an animation using familiar tap gestures.
• A deliberate emotional arc: Begin with overall impact, reveal personalized highlights, and end by returning to the people and businesses the contributor helped.
• A clear ending: Stop autoplay on the closing celebration before offering an optional next-review screen.

Why it mattered

The format created anticipation between moments and established a flexible container that future teams could refresh without rebuilding the entire experience.

Design Move 2

Give Fourteen Modules One Creative Logic

The experience could include reviews, photos, reactions, Recognition, service categories, compliments, and survey answers. Most people qualified for only a subset, so the system needed to feel complete across many combinations.

I led a cross-functional theme process using five criteria: uniqueness, relevance to Yelp, clarity, execution effort, and personalization potential. Four concepts emerged, with Constellation and Memory Jar as the strongest finalists.

We chose Constellation because it connected directly to Yelp's star identity and the role contributors play in guiding other people's decisions.

“Like the stars above, your contributions helped others navigate which businesses to turn to in 2023.”

Creative system

• Shared visual world: Landscapes, stars, and constellation icons tied the modules together.
• Personalized foregrounds: Reviews, photos, categories, and counts made each card specific to the contributor.
• Selective animation: Reserve motion for the opening, closing, and other emotionally important moments.
• Flexible templates: Support different content thresholds without making low-activity experiences feel broken.

Why it mattered

The theme gave illustration, animation, and copy a shared purpose while allowing each module to remain visually distinct.

Design Move 3

Make Personalization Scalable

Not every contributor had the same activity. Some wrote reviews, others shared photos, and many qualified for only a few modules. The design had to generate a personal narrative without requiring a custom composition for every person.

System decisions

• Conditional modules: Show a card only when the contributor had enough meaningful data.
• A complete minimum experience: Guarantee an introduction, at least one personalized highlight, a closing summary, and the optional contribution screen.
• Reusable content patterns: Define consistent rules for counts, business names, photos, categories, and edge cases.
• Category-specific variation: Create 14 illustrated versions of the most-reviewed food category while preserving one layout and interaction model.

Why it mattered

The system made millions of possible content combinations feel intentional while keeping design and engineering work manageable.

Sharing and the Next Contribution

Celebration needed paths outward and forward

Sharing served as the primary campaign action in 2023. People could share a static version of an individual card or copy a link to the complete experience. The system generated shareable assets that retained the Year on Yelp identity outside the product.

Contribution remained a secondary action. After the final celebration, people could choose to continue to a bonus screen with relevant businesses to review. Separating this screen from the recap protected the emotional ending while still providing a useful next step.

Why it mattered

The experience could express contributor identity socially while giving motivated people a natural way to continue participating.

Outcome

A stronger sharing experience with lessons for discovery

Year on Yelp launched on December 5, 2023, across iOS, Android, and web. The card-based system became the foundation for the following year's experience.

The 2023 campaign produced more than 23K shares to social, approximately 5.8K more than the prior year. Social click-throughs increased 143% year over year, and social sessions increased 310%.

The product results also exposed a tradeoff. Prioritizing share increased the share rate, while the review rate declined slightly. The percentage of eligible contributors who viewed their recap remained roughly flat, and click-through rates from major entry points decreased.

The team concluded that the thematic campaign copy made the content less explicit than the previous year's promise to reveal a person's top review and photo. In 2024, the team kept the story system and constellation identity but used more direct entry-point messaging.

What the results showed

• The story format and sharing model created a reusable product foundation.
• Personalization at scale could support a large modular experience without custom design for every user.
• Discovery messaging needed to stay direct: The theme improved coherence inside the experience, but entry points still needed to explain the value clearly.

Reflection

What I learned

• Creative direction is a product-design responsibility. A clear theme and brief helped specialists make hundreds of detailed decisions without fragmenting the experience.
• A system creates personalization at scale. Qualification rules, reusable templates, and visual variation mattered more than crafting one ideal path.
• The experience and its invitation have different jobs. The product could use metaphor and emotion, while entry-point copy needed to state clearly what people would receive.
• Annual campaigns must plan for repetition. A reusable foundation lowers production cost, but content and messaging still need enough freshness to give repeat recipients a reason to return.