Beverado
Case Study: A Mobile App with Drink Recipes & Potable Knowledge
From coffees and teas to mocktails and mixed drinks, this user-centric mobile app aims to make trying new beverages fun, easy, and inviting. Designed to help you discover new beverages and recipes based on your flavor preference.
My Role: UX/UI Designer
Collaboratively designed, developed, and tested a mobile app that helps improve a user's beverage experience and provides intelligent suggestions and recipes. Created branding and style guide to bring cohesiveness and consistency to design.
Research Phase
Our research plan consisted of three segments: competitive analysis of similar apps, an online survey to gain initial insight into users' daily routines, and user interviews to get a deeper understanding of beverage preferences and their selection process.
Step 1: Competitive Analysis
We started the research phase by finding comparative apps in the space and completing a competitor analysis. This allowed us to get a feel for how we wanted our onboarding process to flow,
and identify pain points to avoid.
Cocktail Flow
Strengths
Clean UI and a flow that doesn't feel overwhelming.
The collections lend themselves to people looking to discover new beverages.
Weaknesses
There is no search button, which makes it difficult to easily find specific items.
Strengths
Flavor profile is comprehensive, asks interesting questions, gives description and reasoning behind the questions, and includes an email flavor profile results.
Weaknesses
There are some glitches with navigation features and 404 errors when using some features. It's also a little hard to find the app on the app store.
Drinkspiration
Strengths
The app includes a tab that separates drinks by occasion year round.
Recipes are separated by difficulty, and includes tips.
Weaknesses
There is no place for reviews, and no flavor profile, where a user can only see things that fit their taste.
Key Takeaways
Step 2: Online Survey & User Interviews
We created a survey using Google Forms and conducted 4 user interviews to help identify what users' daily routines look like, what types of beverages they drink and how often, and what pain points they face. We then utilized Miro to add user insight to sticky notes and sort them into
an affinity diagram.
Interview Objectives
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Identify what types of beverages people enjoy, their drinking habits, and how they obtain information.
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To understand our users' lifestyle & daily routine.
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If people were interested in discovering new beverage options and would be willing to learn new recipes.
Our initial assumption was that most people start their day with a cup of coffee but discovered that the majority of the people we interviewed don't drink coffee.
We then pivoted from our initial idea of making a coffee app to one that included all types of beverages, in turn opening up our potential user reach.
User Insight
Affinity Diagram
Step 3: Developing User Personas
To ensure that our decisions moving forward in the design process are user-centered, we wanted to understand who Bevarado's users are. Using what was learned from the surveys and interviews, we created a user persona to represent a typical Bevarado user.
Meet Author, a 27-year-old marketing specialist living in Boston, MA. He is always on the go but likes to take time and unwind in a coffee shop or gastropub. He often hosts cocktail parties at his house accompanied by charcuterie boards and fancy cocktails.
Defining the Problem
Now that we had a clear picture of who were designing for, we wanted to get a stronger understanding of potential pain points they face and how we might help alleviate them. To do this, we completed an empathy map and did a round of storyboarding, accompanied by a journey map.
Step 4: Creating an Empathy Map to Establish a Value Prop
We conducted four interviews to get a deeper understanding of our potential users, added that insight to the sticky note board in Miro, and created an affinity diagram with the information.
“Discover your favorite beverage. Build a flavor profile, find easy-to-follow recipes, uncover potable knowledge, and let us help when you’re not sure what to order.”
Step 6: Ideation & Brainstorming
We used the "I Like, I Wish, What If" method to help brainstorm features, then put them into a prioritization matrix to identify which ones we should include in the initial development, which features might be too complex to tackle right now, and which items didn't hold much value.
Brainstorming
Prioritization Matrix
Wireframing, Prototyping, & Design Phase
Using the understanding of the user and our goals for the app, each team member individually sketched
low-fidelity wireframes, with a particular emphasis on the onboarding and "Flavor Profile Quiz."
Step 9: Usability Testing & Result Analysis
For usability testing, we conducted 4 remote moderated sessions over Zoom. The users were asked to share what they were doing, thinking, and feeling while interacting with the prototype and trying to complete the tasks given to them.
Task 1
Create an account manually
Assumptions
Users are familiar with onboarding processes and won't have issues navigating through the signup screens.
KPIs
Successful account sign up, with the option to continue to Flavor Profile Quiz.
Task 2
Complete Flavor Profile Quiz
Assumptions
People like quizzes that are easy, without a lot of questions, and don't take a lot of time to compelete.
KPIs
Successful navigation through quiz and arrival at welcome screen to proceed to home screen.
Task 3
Use the Surprise Me Feature
Assumptions
Users will find this feature useful and interesting when they're not sure where to start.
KPIs
Ability to navigate to and utilize button to receive a suggestion based off of quiz results.
All of the participants were able to navigate the onboarding process successfully but weren't impressed with the app's aesthetics.
The majority of participants liked the Flavor Profile Quiz but thought it could be a bit more comprehensive. The biggest feedback we received from the quiz was that the 3 flavor groupings didn't fully fit together and weren't exclusive of one another - meaning that a user might like one item in a group but really dislike another. We went back to the drawing board with that feedback and redesigned the quiz, still keeping it digestible and not time-consuming.
Also, users did not enjoy using the Suprise Me feature. We decided to remove the button as users found it unnecessary.
Task 1
Create an account
KPIs
Clean UI and a flow that doesn't feel overwhelming.
The collections lend themselves to people looking to discover new beverages.
Task 2
Create an account
Strengths
Clean UI and a flow that doesn't feel overwhelming.
The collections lend themselves to people looking to discover new beverages.
Strengths
Clean UI and a flow that doesn't feel overwhelming.
The collections lend themselves to people looking to discover new beverages.
Testing Overview
Users were asked to complete
Step 11: Designing High-Fidelity Prototype
After completing testing of the mid-fidelity product, I updated the color pallet, finalized a logo, created a style guide, then applied the revisions to the frames.
Splash Screen
On boarding Screens
Flavor Profile Quiz
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