Coffee Grind
User Centered Design |
User Centered Design |
Coffee Grind is a mobile application designed to help users discover and explore coffee shops in their area, with a focus on work-friendly environments and personalized amenities.
Course: User-Centered Design
Project Timeline: 10 weeks - Winter 2023
User Research
From these interviews we created insights surrounding the motivations, pain points, and goals of our users.
Interview Insights
Goals & Motivations
A place to work with peers and enjoy food and beverages.
An escape from home or otherwise regular work environments.
Pain Points
Lack of key information surrounding dietary options, amenities, and accessibility.
Unpredictable work environment, especially noise levels
Undependable wifi and outlets for charging
Hard to find open seating, especially for those looking for a desk/table
These insights helped us understand the needs and desires of users, certain behavioral patterns, as well as the driving factors that contribute to them being satisfied with finding a certain coffee shop. Ultimately helping us shape accurate user personas.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis helps us identify market gaps, the differences between current platforms, and current user expectations for a potential solution. Along with our interview insights, we created user personas that reflect the user types who will most likely be utilizing our solution.
User Personas
By analyzing our user research, we collected evidence that enabled us to develop user personas, which in turn facilitated our understanding of our users' needs and desires.
In addition to our personas, we created a journey map of our primary persona to get a more detailed and sequential look at a typical experience working at a coffee shop.
Journey Mapping
To gain insight into our design focus, we crafted a user journey map detailing their experiences at a coffee shop. This visualization highlights the steps a user takes to complete a task, aiming to pinpoint key interactions and their impacts in their current setting.
From our research of current solutions and the experiences of our target user group, we found that despite their ambiance and shared community, coffee shops may not consistently align with optimal work requirements.
Problem Framing
From our research we found that while coffee shops offer a conducive environment for work, several challenges impede their effectiveness. Limited availability of power outlets and the scarcity of suitable spaces for collaborative endeavors, coupled with disruptive auditory elements like loud music, hinder their utility as productive workspaces.
The Problem..
The Problem..
How might we create a solution that makes getting work done at coffee shops a completely personalized experience that maximizes productivity for every individual?
Design Goals
Focus on creating tailored experiences for those looking to get work done at coffee shops.
Should be personalized to fit the needs of individuals of all backgrounds, needs, and abilities.
Encourages greater exploration of new coffee shops and gives smaller businesses a wider reach.
Story Boarding
We meticulously crafted multiple storyboards to vividly illustrate various user interactions, aligning them with our design goals. These storyboards offer a compelling visual narrative, allowing us to deeply understand and refine the user experience,
Information Architecture
In hopes of structuring, organizing, and labeling content in a way that facilitates intuitive navigation of Coffee Grind, we created a skeleton blueprint of our solution. This flow outlines the main user flows taking into account pages, actions, decisions, and the displayed buttons.
Wire-Framing
With a basic skeleton of our solution thought out, we began constructing low-fidelity wireframes giving a rough idea of how we wanted the solution to look aesthetically.
Experience Evaluation
With an initial framework of our solution, we decided to test it out with users from varying backgrounds. Through this process we were able to identify kinks and flaws in our design both aesthetically and functionally.
High-Fi Prototype
Taking into account the feedback we received for our initial wire-frame prototype we moved on to implement changes to the review page, filtering options, and reservation buttons as we developed our first high-fidelity prototype. We included both a dark and light mode in hopes of maximizing accessibility to our mobile interface. Furthermore, we expanded upon the user profile implementing an option to save certain coffee shops.