Helping mixers find their moxie!
Are you confident when it comes to your cocktail choice? Do you even know what goes into making your favorite drinks? Well, Mixie wants to make an amateur mixologist out of you!!
Overview
WHAT EXACTLY IS MIXIE?
Mixie is an educational and organizational mobile app for cocktail enthusiasts, of any level. Tell us what you have on hand, and Mixie will come up with the perfect drink just for you. Mixie wants to help bring pizzazz to all your house parties, wants you to learn all about spirits and their flavour profiles, and lastly they want to make an amateur mixologist out of you!
OUR value
OUR GOAL
WHAT’S OUR SECRET
INGREDIENT?
What DID WE HOPE?
Our team set out to create and design a digital comprehensive database that can not only educate you about liquors and cocktails, but also leverage AI to assist you in crafting the perfect cocktail with what you have at home.
Exploration
how did we discover the problem?
COVID-19 has put a pause on our partying days, but it hasn’t stopped us from drinking. Adults have been finding ways to host gatherings at home with people in their bubble and enjoying some drinks from the comfort of their own homes. What are they drinking you may ask?! Well, not everyone is lucky enough to call themselves a master mixologist, so if it isn’t pre-made, they are most likely resorting to wine, beer, or a spirit on the rocks.
THE PROBLEM
what DID WE ASSUME?
After conducting a screener survey to ensure participants were of age, we asked a few simple questions. This allowed us to segment drinkers from non-drinkers and select the right people to interview. We wanted to know if our initial assumptions were correct.
How might we help people feel more confident about their drink choices?
To verify this, we mixed-up a discussion guide with a target audience in mind. This would help us figure out where we could mix into their lives. We quizzed them about their past experiences at bars and at home, and about their drinking history.
AFFINITY MAPPING
But what were people really experiencing?
THE GIST…
We leveraged a technique called Affinity Mapping, this helped our team summarize the key findings from our interviews. By jotting down key quotes and bullets that best summarize the experiences of our participants, we then group them into larger themes that we call “insights!”. This assures that our design will be solving the correct problem.
THE REAL PROBLEM
What did we learn
THE GIST…
Our interviews brought to light several insights that we had not assumed. We found that most people were indeed confident and even opinionated when ordering drinks, making drinks and buying alcohol at the store. What we found instead was that people wanted to learn and grow their mixology knowledge, yet were struggling with finding new cocktail recipes at home. They wanted to spice up their skills using ingredients they had on hand.
PERSONAS
HOW DO WE Personify the ProbleM?
Given our target audience, we created a fictional user, commonly known as a persona. Personas let us design for the many by designing for just one of our most typical users. The purpose of persona is to create a reliable and realistic representation of our target audience for reference. Additionally, it was important to understand the current emotional journey while they plan to host an event, and this is why we created a user journey.
THE AMATEUR MIXOLOGIST
Meet Sage, our 30-year-old cocktail enthusiast who enjoys taking risks when it comes to her drink choices as loves to host dinner parties with her friends.
REDEFINING THE PROBLEM
With Sage in mind, we restructured our problem keeping in mind the following:
How might we provide an educational resource for Sage to develop her mixology skills, so that she can impress her guests with delicious cocktails?
DESIGN
DEFINING THE MVP
HOW DID WE ADDRESS THESE CONCERNS?
After taking a walk in Sage’s shoes, we noticed places of opportunities where Mixie can come in to help ease the craft of cocktail making. These are some features we knew we needed to include before jumping into the design…
HOW DID IT BEGIN?
Our team conducted design studio sessions, over zoom, in order to rapidly generate innovative ideas for the features we had come up with. We agreed upon a theme, mid-century modern, which we would develop over time. We consolidated all our ideas to then generate our mid-fidelity wireframes.
USER FLOWS
THE EXPECTATION
We came up with a total of 4 tasks that we set out to test with at least five potential users. These tasks included adding a bottle to the “my bar” page, finding where you would go to educate yourself, and finding a drink to make with its possible pairings. Below you can see a set of user flows of the expected paths one would take to accomplish all tasks.
How did IT perform?
We conducted a total of 5 usability testings for our first round of testing utilizing our mid-fidelity wireframes. We saw an equal amount of indirect and direct successes across all task and most users with an average success rate of 65%, we knew this could be improved for hi-fidelity below find detail recommendations for each task.
THE SOLUTION
WHAT DID WE CHANGE?
After analyzing the insights gained from our initial round of testing, we moved forward with our prototype, most important bringing in color, developing our theme, and solving the issues that were brought to our attention. It was important to us to have most features front and center, below is the “home” page of the Mixie App.
LETS SEE IT IN ACTION!
How did IT perform?
With the changes made, it was time to see the high-fidelity in action and see how it performed. We conducted another round of usability testing, this time using the hi-fidelity, and we asked users to complete the same 4 tasks to see how they navigated through our interface.
NEXT STEPS
WHAT’S NEXT
WHERE DO WE SEE MIXIE?
Obviously, more testing needs to be done. Additionally, some UI elements need to be reconfigured for ultimate success:
FINAL THOUGHTS…
We just know that Mixie is going to cause a “stir” and really “shake up” the mixology scene… Let Mixie be your guide in the spirit world!
Want to Chat?
