BRWRY

DESIGN CHALLENGE

Create an app using User-Centered Design methodologies that help users discover local breweries. 

THE CONSTRAINTS

Remove the barriers of becoming a knowledgeable craft beer enthusiast and visiting local breweries. Deliver curated content that satisfies needs quickly. Keep the solution narrow.

HOW MIGHT WE?

Make it more time efficient for people to discover and visit breweries?

Make visiting multiple breweries in a day simple and fun?

INSPIRATION

For this project, I started out doing a competitive analysis while simultaneously launching a survey out to my social network. I followed up with 7 in-person interviews and on-site observations which helped me build out my Personas and Journey Maps.

PERSONAS + JOURNEY MAPS

(above) Survey Results

I created Primary and Secondary Personas and plotted their Journeys.

IDEATION

During the Ideation Phase, I created User flows and performed an Open Card Sort which informed the Information Architecture for the app. I sketched out different approaches which let me rapidly work through some ideas and test a paper prototype.

USER FLOWS + INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

(above) Sketching helps speed up ideation. I always carry a sketchbook with me.

Open Card Sorting helped to inform the Information Architecture.

IMPLEMENTATION

During the Implementation Phase, I created a prototype out of my low-fi wireframes and created a usability test that followed the user flows created during the Ideation Phase.

WIREFRAMES

USABILITY TEST

HYPOTHESIS

• Users will have problems navigating through the UI 
• Users won’t be able to create an itinerary
• Users will get confused by the Filter view not having a map on it

GOALS

• Validate the concept of the app with users
• Ensure users can complete basic tasks
• Surface pain points throughout the experience

PARTICIPANTS

• 10 Participants Using Smartphones | 3 Using Desktops
• 5 Moderated - 8 Unmoderated
• Age 25–60 | Income $40K–$150K+
• California, New York, Oregon, Texas, Washington 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

OBSERVATIONS

Some users didn’t like the organization of the profile page. They were confused about beer preferences not being in the “Settings”.

Users wanted more than a star rating on the brewery reviews.

Users enjoyed creating and sharing a Crawl but wanted more options to share and more automated, powerful features.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Rethink the organization of the Profile screen. Maybe put beer preferences in the settings area or expose everything from settings on the screen. A better visual representation may help the screen hierarchy and usability.

Give some more social proof than a simple star rating. Maybe bring in reviews from Untapped, Yelp or another service if we don’t implement our own.

Give users the ability to share in more locations. Include actionable insights and integrate with wearables. Smart Crawl mapping with time to leave, hours open, and time to travel between. Auto-map and order Crawl based on data points so the user doesn’t have to. Show where friends are if meeting somewhere along the Crawl.