PRECAF App

A concept for an application that helps people pre order coffee

THE PROBLEM

“I had to drink horrible instant coffee this morning because the lines were too busy at the cafes”

Ron likes to buy a coffee in the morning on his way to class but he doesn’t have time to wait in busy cafe lines which would ultimately make him late for class.

THE GOAL

Help Ron find an easier way to buy his coffee in the morning

The goal of this project was to come up with a design of an app that Ron purchase his coffee in the morning and not be late.

THE SOLUTION

An app that helps Ron to pre order his morning coffee

PRECAF is an app that will allow Ron to pre order and pre pay for his morning coffee so he can skip the busy cafe lines and arrive to class by 9am.

DISCOVER

“Ron was right. The lines at the cafes were so long!”

I wanted to get a better understanding of what Ron has been going through each morning on his way to class so I got up early and I made my way into the city and walked towards Town Hall at 8am. My plan was to replicate the journey that Ron takes each morning from the station, through the QVB Building to get to GA. In order to get the full experience, I walked from Town Hall, through the QVB building on the hunt for a cafe that wasn’t busy so I could quickly order a coffee without waiting in line or being late to class which started at 9am.

Insights

It took me around 45 minutes to walk from Town Hall to GA and back again trying to get coffee! Most of the cafes were already busy with lines of caffeine craving office goers who were eager to get their morning coffee. There was no way I was going to wait 10 minutes in a line or even fight my way to the front to order so I had to settle on an instant coffee at class. This horrible experience made me realise how useful an app would be where you could pre order and pre pay for a coffee so you could skip the lines and easily get a quality coffee in the morning.

DISCOVER

Seeking Inspiration: Competitive Analysis

Before I went any further or started to sketch ideas I looked at 3 existing apps that are similar to PRECAF and that offer services where you are able to pre order and pay for food and drinks online that you can either pick up or be delivered. The apps that I examined were Skip, Hey You and Ritual.

I created a table that outlined a variety of the features that all 3 apps could offer and went through and marked if they did or didn’t include that feature and made some notes about anything interesting or things that surprised me. On the table I also called out the 3 features that I think are very important and should be used in PRECAF:
• Customise your coffee order
• Easy to order or see fave orders or cafes
• Track your order

Insights:

All of these apps can help you to pre order and pre pay for food and drinks easily with an app but none of them focussed on specifically coffee alone. I feel like PRECAF would be a unique app that would be the go to app for pre ordering your morning hit of caffeine with ease.

Each app did however offer features that I thought should definitely be used in PRECAF and some that I want to keep off:

POSITIVE FEATURES
• Customise your coffee order
• Map with nearby cafes
• Easy to order or see fave orders or cafes

NEGATIVE FEATURES
• Hard to navigate
• Confusing profile or menu section
• Too much choice eg. food

DISCOVER

Seeking Inspiration: Comparative Analysis

Now that I have had some time to review some exisiting apps that are similar to PRECAF, I wanted to look at some other apps that offer key features that I could potentially use in PREFCAF. The 3 apps that I looked at were Domino’s, The Iconic and Booking.com.

Features were:

DOMINO’S
• Tracking notifications
• Option to order or view your fave orders

THE ICONIC
• Save favourites or create a wishlist of items

BOOKING.COM
• You can rate places
• View details on map

IDEATE

Sketching

I started to explore how a user could navigate and move through the app by exploring various ideas for each frame by sketching them out on paper.

Ron gave me some valuable feedback on these frames so I refined the sketches:

• Map instead of a list of cafes so you can see what is near you
• Use check boxes instead of a drop down list to customise your coffee order

IDEATE

Paper Prototype

Next I created a paper prototype that was ready for user feedback. I printed out an iphone template that made it very easy for me to draw each frame and keep within the frame of the app. Being a graphic designer, I found it challenging to not draw details or use colour but it was also nice to strip back a design so you can see the base of a layout that shows the structure. See below:

VALIDATION

Ideation & Refinement

Now that I had a refined paper prototype, it was very important to see what other people thought about it and if they had any feedback about the flow or features of the app.

I sat down with 5 different users, a design professional and Ron again to see how they navigated around the paper prototype and see if they could offer any valuable feedback. After watching the first 2 users navigate though, there was already a problem I noticed — these users were getting to the map and selecting ‘CHOOSE LOCATION’ instead of recognising that the map underneath this was your current location. There are 2 options: You can pre order a coffee on your way to a location OR choose a nearby cafe in your current location. 

I had to make this very clear so I revised this on my prototype along with making all of the square image icons and actual coffee icon so users knew ghat they could select the coffee they wanted etc

VALIDATION

“I love it! This app will definitely make it easier for me to get coffee before class”

After the usability testing and iteration of the prototype, I sat down with Ron to take him through the app to see if he was happy with the changes and progress from the initial sketches. He loved it and thinks that it could definitely solve his problem.

The next steps

Now that I know Ron is happy I want to test the refined prototype with some more users before I start refining the design of then interface, wireframing and creating an interactive prototype.