Market Price Tonight

App UX, Website Design

Market Price Tonight is an app that provides unprecedented access to a curated collection of the world’s best restaurants.

The Goal

The founders of MPT came to First Person with just an idea, one that needed to be branded, designed, and developed, so that they could secure investment, and partner with restaurants. We wanted to create the first version of the app so that the concept could be shopped around to investors and restaurant partners. 

The Result

Market Price Tonight is a private auction tool and recommendation engine for the most exclusive restaurants in NYC and SF. You can review, bid, buy and comment. Not only did we design the experience of the iOS mobile app, which allows users to bid on table reservations to the most exclusive restaurants, but we also created and delivered a responsive website accessible on any device to promote the app.

The client requested specific features and had a concept for how the app would work. I expanded and refined that idea, working out problem areas, how things would function, and how the app would flow. I did a competitive and feature analysis against similar apps, as well as apps targeted towards our users’ demographics. The analysis included reservation sites, event or social discovery sites, or other curation and promotional style apps such as Open Table, Yelp, Epicurious, UrbanSpoon, Sosh, Killer Rezzy, Table8, JetSmarter, and WillCall. 

I found that most restaurant centered apps were basic reservation tools that neither helped boost the restaurant’s bottom line, nor were auction

sites. I learned that my core demographic would often has assistants booking for them, so I needed to include the ability to share reservations. I also learned that the app needed to work as fast as possible for a busy audience who might only be using it in short moments of transition between work, meetings, and home.

I was able to distill the application experience to best and most necessary components, making booking a table through the app fast and easy to do. The user is be able to bid on a table in three easy steps: hit bid now, enter a price, then submit. Based on my wireframes, a designer expanded on the look and feel of the final app.

Website Design

The website was created as a landing page to promote downloading the app from the app store. It also served to promote the benefit of the app not only to those who want to book last minute seats at top restaurants, but for restaurants looking to boost sales with a partnership. I was in charge of UX and Design for the website, as well as an accompanying presentation deck for pitches to potential investors.