Discover Los Angeles is Los Angeles’ tourism marketing organization. In partnership with the Los Angeles Arts Commission, the mobile app was developed to enhance and optimize a visitor (and local’s) experience in the city.

The official guide to Los Angeles, the Discover L.A. app gives urban exploration a whole new meaning. Sleekly designed and packed with contextually crafted content based on time, weather and location, you’ll want to come back daily in search of what to do next in the City of Angels. Built in partnership with the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the app features a wide variety of events taking place throughout Los Angeles on a daily basis.

“Our partnership with the LA County Arts Commission allows visitors and locals to have the best of Los Angeles at their fingertips.” says Don Skeoch, chief marketing officer of Discover Los Angeles. “The Discover L.A. app is the first-of-its kind to utilize proprietary A.I. built to enhance the Los Angeles experience. Through smart technology, the app literally knows to serve up soup and indoor dining suggestions on cool days; the closest beaches and ice cream on warm days.”

The Approach

Instead of creating an app that mirrored the website, our team proposed a polling approach where users could narrow down their interests with A/B questions. All the events would be categorized under three broad categories: “Do,” “Eat,” and “Stay.”

After a short tutorial, users would start at the home screen and select between the 3 main sections of the app, Do, Eat, and Stay, enter the polling stage where they would select between A or B, or reload the screen with a new poll. Once they found a category of interest, they would go to the listings screen where they would flip through various cards in order to find an venue or event of interest.

Thematically synced to deliver personalized content based on weather, time and distance, the app culls suggestions from the city’s endless entertainment options—including world-class museums, diverse dining options, and captivating events.

The app was funded in part by a transportation improvement project grant from Metro. Using the app, travelers can easily traverse the city by clicking “get me there,” which will populate transit options by bike, car and Metro.

“Arts and culture is thriving in Los Angeles County,” states Laura Zucker, executive director of the LA County Arts Commission. “At any given moment, in every neighborhood throughout our region, there are cultural events happening and we want to make sure everyone has access to them.”

User Experience and Interface Design

This project is a unique collaboration between the Los Angeles Tourism Board’s marketing arm, Discover Los Angeles and the Department of Cultural Affairs. We took this as an opportunity to create a uniquely visual and interactive experience for the application. Our mantra is “don’t develop another Yelp!” We pushed the envelop to create a mobile application that is both useful and immersive and the result is one of the most captivating mobile app for any city tourism agencies in the world.