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OASIS: a mall super-app

A mall you can find your way in.

Shoppers inside a mall need a different tool from shoppers at home. OASIS, a startup concept, tried to be both: a companion app for inside the mall and a web marketplace for outside it. Three of us designed it, in English and Arabic.

Type: Startup concept, mall platform
Role: Design lead: app core and checkout
Team: Three designers
Status: Concept

Everything is there, and nothing is easy to find.

The mall has the jacket, the café, the film and the deal, but you get a paper map by the escalator and a website nobody opens mid-visit.

A shopper standing inside the mall.

Short on time, maybe with kids, looking for one store they half-remember, and open to a good deal or a film on the way.

Designed for the last thirty metres.

Deals show the saving, the dates and exactly where to redeem, with 'Add to Apple Wallet'. Store pages lead with opening hours and pickup. Films, dining and a VIP membership give people a reason to open it between visits.

The map gets its own tab.

Most mall apps bury the map in a menu. Here it's one of five main tabs, because once you're inside, finding the store is the whole problem.

Three bets in the concept.

None of them has been tested with shoppers yet.

Designed for the last thirty metres

A deal shows the saving, the dates and where to redeem it, and goes to Apple Wallet, so it reaches the counter.

Reasons to open it between visits

Films, dining, events and VIP give the app a job when you're not at the mall.

A short checkout

Three steps (cart, shipping, payment) with the order total in view the whole time.

What the concept covers.

10 modules: A whole mall

Stores and wayfinding, deals, in-mall product search, dining, films and showtimes, events, VIP loyalty, gift cards, family amenities, and the marketplace checkout.

What I owned

App core: home, map, stores, deals, films, VIP
Marketplace checkout: cart, shipping, payment
Design direction across the team

Test the riskiest bet first.

The biggest unknown is whether people will install one mall's app at all, and that needs testing before anything else. The app and the marketplace also don't share one visual style yet.