Background
Client: The Smiling Bean (Concept)
Role: UI/UX + Visual Designer
For one of my senior-level design classes, I was tasked to develop a coffee subscription service that helped determine the coffee preferences of the customer. Most importantly, the experience must help educate the user about coffee. The final outcome was designing a hypothetical coffee brand with a questionnaire users could fill out which would generate a curated selection of coffee beans based on their answers.
Design Question
How might we design a coffee service that is functional and unique?
Process
This moodboard is bright, happy, and colourful. It embodies the positive mood people may have when they start their day with coffee.
Wireframes
Solution
The Smiling Bean is a hypothetical coffee company that focuses on diverse coffee beans from around the world. Its name references the uplifting, positive mood coffee can put you in.
Themed Months: By basing the monthly coffee box on a specific country, this introduces the user to a variety of coffee beans within that country. It also gave me a better sense of where to take the art direction.
Element of Surprise: Users won’t be able to see what specific coffee they will receive in their coffee box but they will still get an idea through the ordering experience.
Snacks: The Smiling Bean offers snacks to add to the subscription order. These snacks are picked specifically to compliment coffee.
Element of Surprise: Users won’t be able to see what specific coffee they will receive in their coffee box but they will still get an idea through the ordering experience.
Snacks: The Smiling Bean offers snacks to add to the subscription order. These snacks are picked specifically to compliment coffee.
Home page
Checkout flow
Page overview
Reflection
The UX saying "you are not your user" stood true for this design project and made it even more fulfilling. I'm not a regular coffee drinker or a third-wave coffee advocate so I was very unfamiliar with current coffee trends and its culture.
In retrospect, there are a few areas I would improve on if I had the time:
• Responsive design: Designing an excellent mobile and tablet experience.
• Different questionnaire layout: How does it function as individual pages? Am I following best practices?