Designing a local grocery marketplace for Valledupar.
Mi Plaza put local vendors into one app so people short on time could do their weekly shop in a few taps. I led UX design and brand strategy end to end, from research to first release.
- Role
- Experience Designer Sr. & Brand Strategist
- Company
- Mi Plaza Digital
- Timeline
- About 30 weeks to first release
- Platform
- iOS & Android
Problem
Fragmented vendors, long store lines, and unclear delivery windows kept busy households in Valledupar from shopping often, or well.
Solution
One app for local vendors, with a shorter checkout and reliable delivery windows.
Impact
About 30% faster than the old phone-call ordering, timed in usability testing. About 20% of pilot users were still ordering weekly after four weeks.
Context
Designing for people with no time to spare.
Mi Plaza Digital brought me on as Experience Designer Sr. and brand strategist. The idea was to put the local vendors people already bought from into one app, so buying the week’s essentials stopped eating into their time.
The brief covered brand identity, product design and go-to-market, end to end, through first release on iOS and Android. It was a real shift for people used to calling in an order, and the response after launch was mostly positive.
The problem
How do you make grocery shopping fit into a life with no free time?
Before Mi Plaza, people ordered from local vendors by phone, calling in a list with no way to see what was in stock or what it cost until delivery arrived. Buying from several separate vendors, standing in long store lines and guessing at delivery windows made them shop less often, or give up halfway.
Research
Meet David.
Representative persona based on our research. Not a real participant.
I watched how people in Valledupar actually shopped to find where grocery apps wasted their time. Then I tested the app's structure with 15 people over several rounds.
- Age
- 23
- Occupation
- Student
- Status
- Single
- Location
- Valledupar, CO
Description
David Ospino is an architecture student born and raised in Valledupar, Colombia, who has used food delivery apps for years. He’s typical of who we built for: busy people in Valledupar, from students to homemakers, who don’t have time to build a recurring shopping list and get frustrated by how long it takes.
Personality
Tags
Pain points
- Wants a broader product catalog.
- Payment is limited to cash or card only, no other alternatives.
- Wants a wider range of offers on other products.
- Loses time selecting products during the shopping process.
- Delivery windows are limited to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Value Proposition
Mi Plaza is a mobile app for buying a recurring shopping list in under three steps, finding the best deals efficiently, with home essentials delivered in under 30 minutes.
Potential Pitfalls
Apps like this no longer limit themselves to delivery. Rappi already handles adjacent services like insurance, and iFood offers a more intimate, personal shopping experience. The open question: how much of that scope should Mi Plaza take on to stay competitive?
Influencers
Rappi, iFood, and Uber Eats, the apps already shaping what users expect from delivery and convenience.
MVP: Targeted User
Busy households in Valledupar, from students to homemakers, who buy the same basics every week and look hard for specific products.
The original persona canvas that the section above is based on.
The emotional journey I mapped for a pre-Mi Plaza shopping trip: starting neutral, dipping through pandemic health restrictions, out-of-stock aisles, and checkout lines, and only recovering once the order is confirmed.
Early hand-drawn exploration of the Mi Plaza mark, iterating on the storefront-awning motif and wordmark before landing on the final logo.
Approach
Five phases and a shared UI kit.
We built a UI kit with text styles, motion guidelines, and a color palette shared across designers and developers, so the product stayed consistent as the team shipped fast.
Ethnographic Research
Interviews, benchmarking and Google Trends data to validate the persona before any screens were drawn.
Brand & Visual Language
Designed the brand identity and visual language, backed by a value proposition design and a business model canvas.
Journey Mapping
Mapped the customer journey and cut steps from selection to checkout, using card sorting and quick wireframes; sorting sessions showed categories had to sit one tap from home, not buried in a menu.
Build
Worked alongside the developers through the build on iOS and Android, and shipped in staged epics with the product managers.
Test & Iterate
Ran usability testing rounds and updated the UI kit and design system after each release.
- Methods
- Research, Information architecture, Usability testing
- Timeline
- About 30 weeks, first release
- Management
- Scrum / Kanban
- Tools
- Figma, Adobe XD, User Testing
Brand guidelines
A storefront awning with a smile under it.
The sketches above settled on the awning. Below: how the awning is built and how the colors are used.
Component library
Green adds, yellow buys.
The app runs on a small set of parts with one rule for color: green puts things in the basket, yellow takes you to pay. Here they are as live components; the basket pieces share one cart, so change the quantity and watch the totals follow.
Color
Type · Poppins
FavoritosDisplay 28 / Bold
GengibreTitle 20 / Medium
Subtotal (4 items)Body 15 / Regular
$600.00Price 16 / Bold red
App bar
miplazaCanastaButtons
Product card
Gengibre 1000 grms
$600
Basket row
Café instantáneo Descafeinado 85 gr
Precio por unidad: $16.640
Order summary
Resumen de la compra
- Subtotal (4 items)
- $35.600
- Descuento de promoción
- $1.000
- Costos de domicilio
- $2.500
- Total
- $37.100
Tab bar & order pill
Delivery address
Inside the app
Buy your recurring list in under three steps.
Five screens from the main flow, from onboarding to checkout.
Onboarding
Sets up the promise of finding what you need fast, before the user sees a product grid.
Product Detail
Full nutritional description and three ways to act: add, save for later, or buy now.
Favorites
One tap put the monthly staples back in the cart.
Basket
Subtotal, promotions, and checkout visible together, no surprise costs at the end.
Checkout
Order summary, delivery cost, and payment method confirmed before the charge goes through.
Walkthrough
A full pass through the shopping flow, screen by screen.
Mi Plaza Digital
“Luis is a great designer and mentor. He helped me start MiPlaza.co, and designed the original website and the logo. Recently, he designed the new version of the mobile app. He is great in what he does.”
Entrepreneur at Mi Plaza
Impact
The numbers from the pilot and launch, measured against the phone-call ordering people used before.
~30%
Faster to complete a weekly order, timed against the old phone-call ordering process.
~20%
Of pilot users were still ordering weekly after four weeks, tracked in app analytics.
Positive
Satisfaction scores from pilot users.
~20%
Expansion of the vendor network within the first three months.
Prototype
Try the Adobe XD prototype.
An interactive prototype of the Mi Plaza flow, built in Adobe XD.
Closing note
Weekly orders took about 30% less time than calling it in, and about 20% of pilot users were still ordering weekly a month in.