A specialty coffee roaster with cafes in LA, SF, NYC, and Japan.

Project TL;DR summary 

I designed a mobile app for Blue Bottle Coffee that would allow their customers to order ahead of time, shortening wait times. I did this by conducting user research, creating design planning artifacts, creating high-fidelity mockups, performing user testing, and finally creating dev friendly deliverables.

Project Objective

Design an easy way for customers to order coffee online via a mobile device from the trendy coffee chain, Blue Bottle Coffee.

User Research —

Asking Questions

To get insights into how users order ahead via a mobile device, I conducted an impromptu discussion with friends and family around their experiences with mobile food ordering apps. I narrowed my questions around three main aspects:

— How important is the ability to order coffee ahead of time to them using a mobile app?
— What’s their level of experience with using a mobile device, for food ordering or rideshare?
— What were their biggest pain points when it came to ordering coffee from a coffee shop?

 Analysis —

User Pain Points

Based on the user research, these are the core problems this product aims to solve: 

Conservation of time — When comparing coffee house chains, those that allow users to order ahead of time are perceived as being faster. 

Reduce friction — Due to the popularity of Blue Bottle Coffee, the long lines can become daunting.   

Becoming a norm — While a majority of fast casual and coffee house chains are allowing users to order ahead of time, users are beginning to expect this kind of mobile experience. 

The Problem

Currently there isn’t a way to place an order online ahead of time. Because of the popularity of Blue Bottle Coffee, it can easily take 10-12 minutes to get your order. With a packed work schedule, it can be hard to fit in a cup of coffee.

The Solution

Design a mobile app for users to order coffee ahead of time with minimal effort. This app should allow the user to place an order to any Blue Bottle Coffee store within a close area. It needs to be beautiful, simple and user friendly.

Ideation —

Design Planning

The next step centered around creating an inspirational mood board, roughly sketching out ideas, building out wireframe task flow and then creating a journey map that would fulfill the user requirements of the app.