My team sought out to solve the problem of college students frequently finding themselves going from coffee shop to coffee shop to try and find an open study seat or place to relax with friends.
Winter 2023
Busy Brew
The Set Up​
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Technology and Human Interaction Class
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5 group members
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10 weeks
My Role
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(the sole) UX/UI Designer
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User Interviewer
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Usability Test Facilitator
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Brainstorm Facilitator
Methods
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user interviews
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heuristic evaluation
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usability testing
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low fidelity prototype
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medium fidelity prototype
Motivation
The motivation for our project stems from the problem that many Northwestern students face when finding a suitable coffee shop to study at. Students frequently arrive at our favorite coffee shops only to discover that there are no seats available. This disappointment can lead to wasted time, stress, and anxiety. We set out to design a product to resolve this problem for said students – BusyBrew aims to allow students to easily see which coffee shops have available seating by providing real time updates.
Competitive Analysis
I researched the current existing solutions for websites like Google Maps and Yelp that help customers see the busyness and ambience of coffee shops. The whitespace we discovered was live updates on the current busyness of the coffee shop (in combination with the current features of existing products).
Minimalistic, clean design
Displays usual busyness level
Map feature portrays location
live busyness not displayed
Displays pictures of shop
Displays details about coffee shop (menu, reviews, hours...etc)
live busyness not displayed
4 Principles of Contextual Inquiry
Throughout the interview, I used these principles to better understand the people, the technology, and the social and physical context that play a role in the interaction.
Context
Stay in context by sticking to the past actions and and avoiding drifting to summaries ("usually...").
Partnership
Interpretation
Focus
Pay attention to creating a partnership instead of a power dynamic in the user-designer relationship.
Share your interpretation of the user's actions with them and be sensitive to how they respond.
Focus on how the participant performs the activity and the tasks they need assistance with (look for opportunity).
Initial User Interview
My team interviewed 3 avid coffee shop going college students. I asked one pre-med student to recall her trip to a coffee shop the day before and her decision process with it. I especially encouraged her to not talk in general terms like "usually.." but instead recall this instance as I paused to ask her more detailed questions throughout.
Insights
I created a map to display the goals and subgoals of her decision process. I began to add to the map based on the feedback from our other participants. This map helped me to see the needs of the participants and eventually translate them into features on the app.
Persona
We created a persona to explore the needs of a larger group of users (college students) and have a target group in mind when designing the app. We focused on a target demographic of college students that often look for a coffee shop to study at.
Audit Board
During our brainstorming session, I quickly mocked up an Audit Board of the apps we referenced for each feature and added in the "how might we" questions we discussed. Brainstorming and researching the current solutions helped us to pick and choose what features we wanted to include in our own design. It also helped us to ensure the differentiation of our product from the others.
Low Fidelity Prototype
We first came together to brainstorm the initial low fidelity. Our first iteration was a messily sketched flow diagram on a white board. I then designed a low fidelity Figma prototype following the frames we brainstormed.
Usability Testing
We recruited 6 college student participants to go through our usability testing (3 women, 3 men). They completed 3 tasks and a survey.
6 participants
​perform each task out loud
complete survey
facilitator records time and completes heuristic evaluation for each task
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
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login and create an account
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familiarize yourself with the current interface
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select the most ideal coffee shop to go to work on an essay for literature class
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find a location with open seating
(think aloud through the process)
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filter coffee shops by distance
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identify the least popular coffee shop
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decide where to study
High Fidelity Prototype
To start the high fidelity, I created Visual ID by choosing brand, supporting, and neutral colors. I utilized the 60-30-10 rule to create balance in the final prototype. I chose a warm color palette that matches our BusyBrew bee theme and a cozy coffee shop atmosphere.
After the usability testing, I began to implement the changes we categorized and coded in the usability testing. I also added more color and visual ID to the prototype.
The final prototype allows the user to see the busyness level on the coffee "cards" right away when they log in. The user is alerted to fill out a report when they first arrive and leave a coffee shop (that we can track by when they log on or off a coffee shop's wifi). Each reporting gives the user buzz points that build toward different rewards at the coffee shops. The user can view the coffee shops' locations and their busyness levels on the map to make a quick decision on which coffee shop to go to based on their preferences.
Thank you for scrolling!
© 2023 by Sophie Thomas