Background
This was an exciting project that dealt with an extremely niche specialty market. We were a small team that moved fast, with all the resource constraints that a small team faces.
Being a globally dispersed team, we were required to have great team cohension and communication due to the bane of global dispersion, i.e., time differences. But nevertheless, we persisted.
Product
An ecommerce platform for the specialty coffee market that brings together high-end coffee sellers, merchants, and consumers.
The Team
Founder · Product Design Lead & Content Designer (me) · Developer · Visual Designer
Key Areas
A Product Persona Called Phil
The product persona personified the product in its voice and tone for all messaging. Being a product that would help users locate coffee, learn, and generally enhance their coffee-consuming experience, it was important to have a voice and tone that were helpful and friendly.
A secondary use for this persona would be within a chatbot that users could use in their search for types of coffee and coffeeshops.
Sample Flow
Rate a bean
A key aspect of Cafetracker was the ability to rate a certain type coffee bean at a coffee shop. The rating would be added to the establishment’s profile, and would help users in their search for a specific coffee bean within a set geographical area.
User Testing:
"Does it make sense?"
I conducted remote user testing to check the validity of the content and design with a range of participants of varying English-fluency levels. Participants with no prior knowledge of the product were used in testing to make sure that the product was understandable to the first-time user.
Following the gathering of test data and subsequent edits, v1 design and copy were finalized.
Final Product v1
Impact
The reception was overwhelmingly positive from consumers and coffee shops, leading to several speciality coffee shops signing on as early customers and beta testers.
We always knew that this would never be a product with massive adoption rates right off the bat since the subject was so specialized. What we did know and acted upon, was that there was no comparable product on the market, and that the opportunity lay open for the taking. And we went with it.