Joey
Matching Home Baristas with the Perfect Coffee Beans
Joey is a mobile solution for coffee enthusiasts to find their perfect coffee beans.
Coffee holds a special place in my life, as it does for millions of people around the world. It’s warm, soothing, and something to look forward to each day. In late 2017, I got very interested in the brewing process of coffee and began to brew my own coffee at home. This not only helped me save money, but I was also able to experience different kinds of beans and brewing methods. As I got more immersed in the coffee culture, I realized just how oblivious I was to the different origins, flavours, and roast levels that coffees have to offer.
I saw an opportunity to design a product that would help educate people on the world of coffee, so that they can enjoy the special beverage to its fullest. I worked on this project for 4 weeks with two other designers that shared the same vision.
Overview
The Challenge
Whether you are walking down the coffee aisle at a grocery store, or standing in line at Starbucks, coffee drinkers are bombarded with a plethora of coffees. Colombian, Arabica, high acidity, dark roast, medium roast, there are just too many elements to coffee which makes it difficult for people to know what’s what. Particularly for those who brew coffee at home, it becomes a challenge to decide on which beans to buy.
Narrowing down the scope
As a way to narrow down on the scope of our problem space, our team collaborated on defining our user stories. We focused each statement on the perspectives of our users, and what their goals would be when using our product.
It came down two goals that we wanted to achieve with this project. We wanted our users to learn about the different kinds of coffee beans around the world and the various brewing methods. In addition we wanted to help users pick out their ideal coffee by analyzing their preferences in flavour, texture, and brewing method.
Our Goals
Build an educational tool for coffee drinkers and match people to their ideal coffee beans
User Survey
We kicked off our research by putting out a survey as a way to quickly get data from our users and potential users. Our survey questions were consisted of a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions, that were aimed to understand how many people brew coffee at home and what people think about when they are buying coffee. Through a total of 24 responses, we were able to find that
Brewing Experience
96% of respondents have experience brewing coffee at home
Brewing Methods
Most people use a traditional coffee maker at home, with the French Press being a close second
Choosing Beans
Majority of respondents choose coffees based on its flavour and roast
User persona
After analyzing the data from the research, we created a persona to represent the goals and frustrations of our target users. Our persona, Jane Grath, characterizes the lives of students that want to start brewing coffee at home but does not know where to start.
Mapping out the experience
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Design Explorations
With the insights we established from our research, we began thinking of various solutions that would match our users to their ideal coffee beans. We thought of a task flow where users would answer a series of questions on their preferences in flavours, roasts, textures, and the product would generate recommendations for coffee beans that matches the users’ taste. The challenge was to make this fun and enjoyable to use.
The idea of asking the questions through a chatbot feature came up, and we decided to explore this idea further by creating a prototype to test with our target users.
Testing our idea
The chatbot, who we named “Joey”, offered a conversational and seamless way of asking questions to determine our users’ preferred coffee. We came up with 11 questions that we wanted to ask, and we designed a flow that mirrored a text messaging conversation with pre-filled answer bubbles, so that users can simply select their answer rather than typing it out. We had hoped that the chatbot feature would make this task easier and enjoyable, however when we tested our prototype we found it to be rather a limiting factor. We found that:
The questions were not relatable
When asking about our users’ preference on the roast and texture of their coffee, we used comparative questions such as how toasted they liked their bread. However, not all of our test participants ate toast, and therefore they were not able to answer the question.
The process took too long
As each question was formatted into a conversation, we found that the flow became too long. Additionally we learned that 11 questions were far too many when it came to determining what coffee is right for the users, and some questions were asking the same thing
Navigating through the app became confusing
By having the chatbot be the primary feature, users found it difficult to navigate back and forth from their coffee match results and the chat/questionnaire
Design Changes
Based on the feedback we received from the chatbot design, we decided to utilize a more standard questionnaire quiz design. We wanted to focus on a solution that would give users the freedom to browse for coffee beans, learn about the different regions that the beans come from, and take the coffee matching quiz whenever they wished to.
Building a more complete product
With the addition of a navigation bar, we took the chatbot idea of Joey and turned it into a personal barista that users can click on at any time to learn about coffee beans, and take the matching quiz. We also changed the wording and the number of questions, leaving only the ones that are essential to matching users with their perfect coffee beans.
Testing and Iterating
After going through a second round of testing, we learned that adding an E-commerce feature to Joey would enhance the experience of getting matched with a coffee bean. Our users expressed that while it was enjoyable to take the matching quiz, they would like to purchase the beans directly from the app, rather than search for it elsewhere.
This presented a new challenge as integrating an E-commerce element to a mobile application would require a seamless experience that is not only easy and accessible, but also retains users to come back to purchase again. In order to do so, we focused heavily on the checkout flow.
3-Step Checkout
We experimented between a one step and a three-step checkout, and decided on the latter. Since this checkout process will be on a mobile device, we decided on three separate screens in order to avoid crowding and reduce cognitive load for our users.
Checkout Options
It was important to give users the option to checkout as a guest. While creating an account can save users’ information for future purchases, it could also prolong the checkout process, which could lead to users abandoning their shopping carts.
Easy Payment Methods
Based on our research we found that Paypal, along with credit cards, to be the most used methods of payment on a mobile device. We also utilized the camera on smartphones to expedite the process of entering credit card information.
The Final Design
We put together the E-commerce feature with our existing design to create the final version of Joey. Through two rounds of testing and iterations, we were able to design a mobile app that offer users a place to learn about coffee, get matched with their ideal beans, and shop for coffee – much like your local coffee shop.