Navigating Social Distancing During the Pandemic

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I spearheaded the development of GoNoGo, an innovative app designed to help people maintain social distancing while managing essential outings. Our challenge was to create a user-friendly solution that would inform people about crowd levels at various locations, enabling them to time their necessary trips and minimize potential exposure.

As the lead on this project, I was responsible for concept development, UI design, and brand identity creation. The app's key feature was its ability to provide real-time crowd level information for specific locations, sourced from the Google Location API, presented through an intuitive interface for quick decision-making.

The branding was carefully crafted to reflect the app's purpose and values. We named it "GoNoGo," echoing the decision-making process for venturing out. The logo featured two location beacons forming a heart shape, symbolizing care and community. Our tagline, "Taking care. Anywhere," emphasized social responsibility.

In collaboration with a development partner in Pakistan, we created and tested an early version of the app. However, user testing uncovered significant challenges, primarily the prohibitive costs associated with API data retrieval. Given the app's limited long-term viability due to the expected temporary nature of the pandemic, we made the difficult decision to discontinue the project.

While GoNoGo didn't proceed to full launch, this project showcased our team's ability to rapidly ideate and prototype solutions in response to urgent societal needs. It demonstrated our agility, user-centric design approach, and capacity to innovate under pressure. The experience provided valuable insights into API integration costs and highlighted the importance of considering long-term sustainability in app development, even for time-sensitive solutions.