About
About
Work/Locally
Design CompetitionConsumer AppRapid Sprint

Locally

Won 3rd place in Adobe + Instagram Creative Jam! Discover and empower small businesses in your neighborhood — 3 iterations, 37 screens, 2 sleepless nights, and 16 cups of coffee.

Role

UX/UI Designer

Team

Team of 2

Tools

Adobe XDDesign & prototyping
ZoomUser interviews
DiscordTeam coordination

Timeline

1 week sprint

D1D3D5D7
ResearchConceptVisual & UI
Designed for
mobile

TL;DR — The Outcome

What shipped

  • 3rd place out of 500+ submissions at Adobe + Instagram Creative Jam
  • 37 screens across 3 iterations with a complete visual identity in 7 days
  • Previous competition: AffiniTree with Amazon — honorable mention among 400 teams

My role

  • Background research and creative direction
  • Heavy visual design with balanced ideation
  • Timeline management — team of 2
  • Tools: Zoom, Discord, Adobe XD

Timeline

1 week (Adobe + Instagram Creative Jam 2021)

3rdPlace — of 500+Adobe + Instagram Jam
37Screens designedAcross 3 iterations
2Sleepless nightsWorth every minute
16Cups of coffeeThe real fuel

Next case study

Traction Design System

Vamsi Karuturi

Senior UX Designer

© 2026 Vamsi Karuturi. Crafted with intention.

01 — Context

One week. One brief.
Five hundred teams.
Let's go.

Adobe Creative Jam 2022 was equal parts marathon and sprint. My first jam with Adobe + Amazon produced AffiniTree, an honorable mention among 400 teams across the US, UK, and Canada. This time the stakes felt higher, the competition fiercer — and our concept, Locally, placed 3rd out of 500+ teams.

Adobe Creative Jam with Instagram

The Brief

This round partnered with Instagram, and the problem space centered on empowering small businesses through accessibility. The constraint was deceptively simple:

“Design an accessible third-party app for Android mobile devices that highlight people's favorite local and undiscovered small businesses.”

02 — Research

Seven days. No extensions.
Ship or don't.

A week sounds short until you treat the constraint as a feature. We had no time for scope creep, so every decision had to earn its place. First move: lock down who we were designing for and what problem we were actually solving.

We wanted discovery to feel like an adventure, not a search

Strategic Questions:

  • How do we make local exploration feel genuinely playful — not transactional?
  • Should we curate the experience or let users wander on their own terms?
  • Who actually craves this kind of discovery — and what triggers that craving?
  • How do we close the visibility gap for small businesses without making them feel like ads?
A page from my research for Locally

Early research notes — mapping the problem space

03 — Concept

Locally — because the best places
are already in your neighborhood.

D1
D2
D3
D4
D5
D6
D7
Research
Survey & analysis
D1–2
Creative
Identity, UI, brand
D2–7
Timeline
Planning & scope
ALL WEEK
ZoomDiscordAdobe XD

2 designers · fully remote · 7-day sprint

My Role

Two designers, fully remote, collaborating across Zoom, Discord, and Adobe XD. In a jam this fast, clear ownership is everything. Here's what I drove:

  • Foundational research — aligning our concept to the target audience, the brief's accessibility requirements, and competitive landscape.
  • Creative direction — setting the visual tone with a bias toward bold, expressive design while keeping ideation grounded.
  • Timeline management — structuring our week so we shipped on time with breathing room for last-minute polish.
Persona for Locally — Curious Sam

Meet our primary persona — Curious Sam

Target Audience

The age range was broad, but two behavioral traits gave us the sharpest focus:

  • Locals who walk past hidden gems every day without knowing they exist — curious but habitual.
  • Visitors exploring a new neighborhood who want authentic recommendations, not tourist traps.

User Survey

With only days on the clock, we couldn't afford a drawn-out research phase. We spun up a rapid Qualtrics survey to pressure-test our assumptions and surface the preferences that would actually shape the product.

Key signals from 106 responses:

Food dominated

People gravitate toward dining over activities when exploring locally.

Ambiance & service

The strongest emotional drivers — more than price or convenience.

Novelty vs. familiarity

A near-even split — we needed to serve both cravings.

Google Maps is default

Our opportunity was making discovery feel less utilitarian.

Positivity gap

People rarely share positive experiences but are quick to voice negative ones.

04 — Architecture

Information Architecture

Before opening a single artboard, we mapped the full screen hierarchy and core user flows. With only a week, this became our prioritization tool — it told us which screens to design first and which to cut if time ran short.

LoginOnboardingLandingBookmarksSearchCollectionsCommunityPromotionsProfileAdd PlaceCurated ListsFollowingBusiness PromosUser ActivityAuth flowMain pagesSub-pagesLoginOnboardingLandingBookmarksSearchCollectionsCommunityPromotionsProfileAdd PlaceCurated ListsFollowingBiz PromosUser ActivityAuth flowMain pagesSub-pages

From napkin sketches to structure

Rapid pen-to-paper exploration, then straight into Adobe XD to validate layout and flow

Wireframe 1
Wireframe 2
Wireframe 3
Wireframe 4
Wireframe 5
Wireframe 6
v1v2av2bv2cSHIPEvery wireframe opens three more doors

Design doesn't converge — you decide when to stop.

Every wireframe opened a door to three more ideas. That's the thrill and the trap of a jam — inspiration is cheap, focus is expensive. My role became part designer, part editor: channeling our energy toward the ideas that served users best while keeping the clock honest.

05 — Visual Design

Building a brand in days, not months

The brand had to feel warm, adventurous, and instantly inviting.

We landed on a red-orange palette with clean white space — colors that evoke excitement and warmth without screaming at you. Rounded edges everywhere reinforced the approachable, friendly tone we wanted users to feel on first launch.

Bely Display brought personality to headings — it felt exploratory without being whimsical. Paired with Rig Sans for body text, we got readability and character in a single type system.

We also built a small component library in XD — not out of perfectionism, but survival. When you're iterating at this speed, global edits need to be one click, not thirty.

A mini design system — born from necessity, not process.

Visual identity — color palette, typography, and design components

The Locally visual system — palette, typography, and reusable components

Interactive Prototype

06 — The Product

Meet Locally.

A community-powered discovery platform where neighborhoods come alive. Locally immerses users in the places around them — surfacing hidden gems, celebrating familiar favorites, and giving small businesses a direct line to the people nearby.

And because discovery happens on the go, Locally gracefully degrades on poor connections — switching to a lightweight text-based mode so you never lose access to what matters.

Explore

An unguided, serendipitous feed of places around you. The more you use Locally, the sharper its recommendations become — learning your tastes without asking.

Community Activity

See what people in your neighborhood are discovering. Follow friends, locals, and tastemakers to find places through shared curiosity.

Promotions

Small businesses push deals directly to nearby users — no algorithms burying them. It’s the most direct connection between a shop and its community.

Accessible

When connectivity drops, Locally doesn’t break. It switches to a lightweight text-based mode so you always have the information you need, wherever you are.

07 — Reflection

What I'd do differently

Hindsight is 20/20 — and that's the point.

The landing screen defaulted to “New” and “Popular” — functional, but generic. Given more time, I'd have introduced intent-based categories like Food, Adventure, and Entertainment so users could signal what kind of discovery they were in the mood for. That one change would have made the experience feel far more personal from the first scroll.

Components and color scheme

Components & Color Scheme

Landing page design

Landing Page

3Design iterations
37Screens shipped
500+Teams competing
3rdPlace finish

“One more week and we'd have won it.”

— Every designer, after every jam