De Pinchos

Going Tapas in the city of Salamanca

La Feria de Salamanca

Yearly, the city of Salamanca, Spain, celebrates its main holiday. For 10 days, up to 100 bars go out in the street showcasing their best preparations in "tapa" shape. This is a guide for the visitors to learn where the best food is served during this week.

Design Principles

For the definition of the product, we worked with three design principles that were important for us:

Less App-ish

Design patterns are a great reference but can also become a constraint. Superimposing information on the map let us getting rid of TabBars and endless listings in favor of a more flexible interaction and a distinctive look for the app.

Multi-Path

To be easy to use, it must be first easy to learn. We achieved this by making sure that each user would find the information they need the way they want, wether it was by using the search box, dragging the map or tapping one of the top ranked stands.

Android First

Two Android users for every iOS one implied focusing on a deeper understanding of Google’s design guidelines. This made us opt for an ‘Android-first’ design that would be also consistent when taken into iOS.

Interaction Design

In order to achieve an efficient and easy to learn design, an interaction design was proposed and validated with user interviews since very early stages, testing it even on paper prototypes.

Final Result

The Results

After four years designing and improving this product, the results could not have been better. We achieved four years of steady growth, in which 'De Pinchos' became a real protagonist of the yearly fair.

The app would lead more customers to the top stands in the raking, but also every stand would drive users to the app, trying to make their ranking better.

Since this project started in 2011, De Pinchos grew from around 5,000 users to almost 20,000 four editions later, in 2014. To put this numbers in context, it is worth remembering that the whole population of Salamanca is of roughly 150,000 people and this app is of use for only 10 days a year, while the fair lasts.