Learn-A-Latte

Sharing knowledge about coffee.

User Research | Prototyping | UI Design

Project Team | Riley Osborn | Nikita Rajput | Charu Thomas

Introduction

"Sharing economy" was the theme of my user interface development class. For our semester-long project, the class split up into groups and created a system that facilitated contact between providers and consumers. My group decided that our providers would be coffee experts and enthusiasts and our consumers would be the coffee-curious.

First Steps

My group originally had a different idea for the project. Instead of focusing on coffee, we planned to create a service where experts of various subjects could link up with people who are interested in those subjects. The idea was that the novice could learn from the expert. We conducted our user research, affinity diagrams, and produced user personas with this in mind.

Personas we created for our primary stakeholders.

We also performed a competitive analysis by sending out a survey and conducting interviews under our former name, Criddit.

Affinity diagrams were made based on the interviews.

Reviewing

However, after being reviewed by our peers and instructors, we realized that our interface was too broad and that we needed to narrow down our scope. So we decided to center our interface on learning about coffee.

Design Criteria

When developing our concept, we created three design criteria to keep our ideas cohesive. The first criterion was convenience. We wanted the interface to be accessible to users across a variety of platforms. The second was credibility. The coffee expert should be reviewed for legitimacy and professionalism. And the third was customization. The coffee novice should feel as if they had a personalized learning experience tailored to their interests.

Possible Solutions

After we cemented our design criteria, we created prototypes of possible solutions for our problem space: CoffVR, Coffee Subscription Box, and Expert-Led.

CoffVR is essentially a video library of tutorials that novices can experience in VR. The idea behind this solution was to provide the novice with a way to watch an expert teach in real-time.

CoffVR storyboard.

The Coffee Subscription Box, as its name implies, is a subscription box that is sent to the novice which contains an assortment of items that the novice can use to learn a coffee-related skill (i. e. cold brewing, latte art, etc.). After receiving the box, the novice can go to the service’s website and watch a companion tutorial video made by an expert. The idea is that they can follow along with the expert with all the materials readily available for them to use.

The Coffee Subscription Box storyboard.

Expert-Led is simply a method for experts and novices to physically meet. In this solution, we envisioned that the two would meet in a public place and that the expert would have an itinerary planned for the novice. Think coffee house tours across a big city.

Expert-Led storyboard.

Reflecting

After presenting our solutions, we figured that our prototypes weren’t the best solutions to our problem. CoffVR was just a video library but in VR. Anyone could go on YouTube and search how to cold brew. The Coffee Box Subscription could be expensive, and the materials inside of them could be a liability. Expert-Led was just a little too mundane.

Our Final Prototype

This solution involves the novice registering for an account with our service where they can input their interests. An expert creates a box containing all the materials that they will need to learn about their chosen topics. For example, if a novice was interested in roasting coffee beans, the expert would send them a bag of coffee beans, creamer, and sugar. When the novice receives the box in the mail, they can scan the labels that are on each item in the box. Scanning the items link their device to a video tutorial of the items in the box. Additionally, the entire video library is open for all members to view regardless if they have scanned a label or not. Potential expert users can also use the system by sending an online application through the website where each application will be reviewed for credibility.

A demo of our final prototype.

What's Next?

At the last phase of the class, everyone was required to reflect on their final prototype and complete a heuristic evaluation. A good starting point for further developing the interface would be to fix some of these heuristic violations and to polish up its existing functionality. Afterward, usability testing is a must.