A personal guide to Notting Hill
For years, friends have asked me where to go in Notting Hill. So I turned my answers into a website: the places I love and an AI guide you can ask the way you'd ask me. I designed and built it, working with Claude.
Livenottingchic.com
Context
How it started
I love discovering new places. I walk, I get lost in the streets, and when I find somewhere I like, I take a photo and save it to share with my friends later. I've spent many years in west London, most of them in Notting Hill. It's the area I know best: the restaurants where I eat, the shops where I buy, the cafés I keep going back to.
So whenever friends, and even colleagues, were heading to Notting Hill, they asked me where to go. I'd send them my places on WhatsApp: where to have dinner, where to shop, what to order. I once made a blog, and later a small printed guide. Now I wanted something more: a website with AI built in, to share my places not only with my friends, but with anyone who comes to Notting Hill.
Many friends, one long answer
Goal
The brief
Turn my messages into a guide that anyone visiting Notting Hill can use, and that still sounds like me. Every place had to be one I know and would send a friend to. And when I can't tell people where to go, the AI guide should do it for me.
Research
My places, my friends' questions
The guide is me, so most of the research was mine. Every place is one I go to and know well: I've been there, and I've spoken with some of the owners. I chose each one the way I'd choose for a friend.
Then I talked to the friends who kept asking me. I wanted to know what mattered most when choosing where to go. They needed three things: why I'd send them there, where it is, and when it's open. That was everything I used to put in my messages.
Process
How I worked
As with every project, I started with research, gathering everything I needed for this one. Once I had it all, I worked with Claude to pull together the insights and feedback and organise them. From there, still with Claude, I moved on to defining the idea: what each place should show, and one specification for the brand and the design system. Then, instead of going to Figma to design, I went straight to Claude Code, so designing and building happened together. I tested every change in the browser, on desktop and on my phone, and showed it to my friends before launch.
How I worked, from research to launch · Tap to zoom
How NottingChic is organised · Tap to zoom
The design system, in code
The design system lives in code, not in a design file. Colour, type, corners and shadows are tokens: named values I set once at the top of the site's stylesheet, such as --red or --radius. Every part of the site uses those names, never the raw values, so changing a token changes it everywhere. Dark mode uses the same names with different values.
The rules, such as four colours only and the display typeface for headings only, live in a written specification that Claude Code reads before every change. That keeps every change consistent. Later I brought the tokens into Figma as variables, so the design file and the site match.
Each token, and where it lives on the siteA few of the tokens, and where each one lives on the site
Solution
How it works
Every place sits in one of seven groups, to browse as a list or on a map. Each place has its own page with the photo, the address, opening hours, directions and my verdict. And on every page there's Ask NottingChic: you ask in your own words, in any language, and it answers like a friend would, only with places from the guide.
I made a few decisions that shaped it. A place opens where you are, as a page on a laptop and as a sheet on a phone, so you never lose your place in the list or on the map. The places the guide recommends open inside the chat, so the conversation stays where you left it. On the phone, the map's cards follow a walking route: each swipe takes you to the next nearest place. And opening hours and prices are checked every two weeks, so what the guide tells you stays true.
From exploring the guide to finding the right place
NottingChic Picks, as a list or on a map
Each place, with the NottingChic verdict
How the guide behaves
I was clear on how it should behave: like me, answering a friend. So I wrote its instructions: what it knows, how it answers and what it never does. It only knows the places I chose, with my own reviews, and it never makes up opening hours or prices.
The rules I wrote for the guide · Tap to zoom
Impact
Just launched
NottingChic has only just gone live, so it's too early for numbers. The first people to use it were the friends who used to ask me. They loved it, and they use it a lot. It started with a handful of places and keeps growing, and I'll keep learning from what people ask the guide.