SIXPOINT BREWERY Mobile App

OVERVIEW  // QUESTIONS  //  RESEARCH  // USERS  //  DESIGN //  TESTING  // CONCLUSIONS

An Overview

In this UX Immersive course project at General Assembly, my team partner Meagan and I chose Sixpoint Brewery as our "client."

Sixpoint Brewery.

If you've spent any time at a Brooklyn bodega or bar, you've seen this ubiquitous, nautical-inspired six-pointed star on tap-handles & beer cans alike. With the advent of their canning operation in 2012, Sixpoint expanded the reach of their distribution nationwide. To further engage this new, growing consumer base, Sixpoint introduced an iOS & Android app "Sixpoint Beer Finder." 

We identified this now-dated app as a major opportunity to create new features and functionality, optimize content structure & introduce delightful interactions befitting such an exciting, creative brand.

Our process encompassed a deep level of research, from multiple interviews and a series of surveys to contextual inquiries & a broad canvasing of the competitive space. We then prioritized our feature development based on our Users' stated hierarchy of needs and dedicated two user flows to form the underlying structure to our app design.

Finally, we iterated multiple versions of our clickable prototype and pivoted where needed, based on feedback from rounds of Usability Testing. Our final collection of deliverables included thorough research documentation, as well as a library of detailed design artifacts.

All in all, this project was extremely engaging, thirst-quenching & full of learnings and surprises. Six out of six stars.

Questions | To Beer or not To Beer?

Knowing a beer is not synonymous with knowing a beer community. To build this new app, we needed some important questions answered:

• Who is the craft beer community and what are their habits? Where and with whom do they enjoy their craft beers?
• What motivates and inspires craft beer enthusiasts? What do they most value in their enjoyment of craft beer?
• In order of importance, what do craft beer enthusiasts specifically need to know to deepen their engagement? 
• To what extent does social media and device usage impact the enjoyment of craft beer?

Research | Drinking it All In

We have all had a beer before that really surprised us. And it's something about that surprise and wonder that lies at the heart of the craft beer community –elevating the everyday enjoyment of a more commercial product (Budweiser, Miller, etc) to something more meaningful & personal. When we set out to learn more about craft beer enthusiasts, the response was very enthusiastic. We found the community to be:

In addition to our interviews and contextual inquiries, we ran three distinct surveys to gather more targeted data:

• An initial survey focused on demographics, behaviors & tech usage.
• An open-ended follow-up focused on opinions and perceptions of Sixpoint Brewery as our design needed to maintain their overall brand. 
• A follow-up to those who stated a high-level of social media/device usage determined an exact priority level for each new feature.

This is where we reached an important crossroads.

Users & Needs | Distilling Findings into Stories

We generated the following personas based on our extensive research into the craft beer community (click to view full size):

Our design would need to address the needs of both casual users and more dedicated ones. The specific user flows associated with each would need to minimize the number of click throughs to reach such high-level areas of interest as Beer Biographies & Events. Our new features such as Reviews, Pairings & Event ticket purchase would live seamlessly within these larger buckets.

Design | An Ingredient List of Features

With our new scenarios and flows constructed, it was time to develop the underlying skeleton of our new app. Our first step was to redefine the immediately navigable feature sections. Based on User Research, we now knew that detailed Beer Information was paramount. And while craft beer enthusiasts enjoyed knowing more information, they preferred not being inundated with it all at once. This led us to move away from the broad and shallow array of the Beer Finder app and towards the creation of a nested architecture of branching nodes.

Our research led us to re-prioritize our branching features in this order:

When asked what they liked most in our User Surveys, those familiar with Sixpoint most frequently mentioned the brand's visual identity:

We identified this as a great opportunity to leverage the community's familiarity and love for Sixpoint's unique visual brand. By elevating the Sixpoint Beer Can to become primary the hero image immediately upon loading, we were able to bring more impact and delight to interaction. Once we A/B tested the Can Option vs the Icon Option, it was instantly apparent among users which was the clear winner. 

Testing | Letting our Users Take a Shot 

To confirm the assertions made in our design, the clickable prototype underwent multiple rounds of Usability Testing and participants ranged widely in their experience with Sixpoint Brewery and craft beer overall. This feedback was an invaluable step in our design process.

As we moved from low-fidelity to high-fidelity and eventually color, the evolution of our iterations focused on larger concerns of flow and feature priority as well as certain granular details as icon choice & legibility (click to view full size).

HOME Screen Design Process Notes

1. Low Fidelity: We A/B tested between this screen and one with circular Sixpoint icons; the BEER CAN array won out;

2. Medium Fidelity: We edited the GLOBAL NAVIGATION based on User Feedback about icon clarity, flow and feature priority

3. High Fidelity: We dropped in final BEER CAN hero photography to best emphasize the brand's visual identity

Conclusions |  Last Call & Looking Forward

The range of final features was nested within the Beer Information screen. It was important for the basic interface and navigation to remain consistent, learnable & accessible. 

In the long-term vision for this app development, we envision expanding certain features as the Pairing and Review sections. As the beer community is very well informed & tight-knit, it was important to lend credibility to the Reviews. Currently, Reviews come from enthusiasts' most trusted outside sources for a deep pool of democratic reviews such as Untappd, BeerAdvocate & RateBeer. To deepen the impact of Reviews, Sixpoint will need partner with these third-party sources. To further develop Pairing options, there exists an opportunity for Sixpoint to partner with other parallel brands in a similar fashion as well.

In summary, our mission in this app build entailed:

• Creating new features and functionality supporting the needs of craft beer enthusiasts
• Optimizing app structure and flow to empower engagement through layers of content & 
• Introducing delightful, simple interactions

Engaging the craft beer community, we learned that they have passion, curiosity & an openness to trying new things. This desire is only matched by their commitment to their community and sharing experiences with like-minded others. There are many opportunities to better service this audience & it was an absolute pleasure performing this exercise. I would relish the opportunity to tackle more of these opportunities in the future.

Hey, I'll be free come this September if you want to hire me!