A gamified specialty coffee app that encourages users to explore local coffee shops, in order to lower the intimidation factor of specialty coffee and bring more coffee drinkers into local businesses.

User Research

Research Synthesis

Affinity Mapping

Journey Mapping

Personas

Sketching

Wireframing

Usability Testing

Prototyping

Coffee drinkers need a way to get information on local specialty coffee shops and their drinks & offerings, in order to make specialty coffee less overwhelming and intimidating so that they can enhance their daily coffee experience. Now, how might we provide info on specialty coffee and local shops in an enjoyable, intuitive, and easily digestible way?

A gamified specialty coffee app that encourages users to explore local coffee shops, in order to lower the intimidation factor of specialty coffee and bring more coffee drinkers into local businesses.

We started our User Research phase with some interviews. We did 3 in total, 2 of which being with expert baristas so that we could further understand the learning curve of specialty coffee and get a deeper insight on how these brand new coffee shop goers experience their world for the first time. We also just wanted to hear from them on what they would want or expect an app like Coffee Quest to have, and hear what potential pain points they’ve encountered in the specialty coffee world.

In this affinity map we learned that regardless of coffee expertise, our users actually all have similar core values for their daily coffee experience.

Brian is a UX Designer living in Cleveland, Ohio. He is often cooped up working from home, and because of this he likes to stay involved in cool, hip, and unique experiences that his local scene has to offer. He is a caffeine addict and has a very strict coffee ritual in the mornings. He has recently taken a deeper interest in coffee after loosely hearing about specialty coffee from his co-worker. Because of his new interest, he began researching online for more information on specialty coffee, and he recently bought his own grinder and pour-over set to make better quality coffee at home. He wants to get even deeper into specialty coffee, and wants to visit some local coffee shops to see what they offer. However, Brian doesn't know where to start with choosing a coffee shop to visit, and gets frustrated and overwhelmed because of the amount of options and his lack of understanding of specialty coffee.

Finally, before jumping into the first wireframes, I created a journey map to analyze how a new user would act, think, and feel while using Coffee Quest for the first time. I learned about some unique opportunities that I could capitalize on in order to make the first-time experience of specialty coffee a little more comfortable for our users. For example, through this journey map, I saw an opportunity to add in the Crowd Meter feature along with a top-down seating and charging map.

I wanted to create some more of that excited feeling with the bright colors, like how within some video games with different rarities of quests, or items, the rarer the item, the more vibrant the color, so that’s how I approached our Quests screen and each quest varying in rarity from “common” to “legendary”. I took away the original top navigation bar and moved all navigation down to the bottom of the screen to keep it all easily accessible and in one place.

Party up with friends.

Daily Energy limit

Side Quests

Coffee Quiz

Exhaust Data

Gems (in-game currency)

Featured Shops