Design at UCI
LoCafe
UX/UI Designer
DURATION
October 2023 - December 2023 (8 weeks)
TOOLS
Miro
Figma
TEAM
Thanusree Ammisetti
Emily Boo
Nina Nguyen
Isabelle Salvador
Context
WHAT IS DESIGN AT UCI?
Design at UCI is the premier club for UI, UX, and graphic design at the University of California Irvine. This organization holds a quarterly Project Teams program, where students form teams to work on a design project of their choice from ideation to high fidelity prototyping.
The Problem
THE STRUGGLES OF CAFE-HOPPING
From college students to cafe enthusiasts, many face challenges in finding suitable coffee shops for productive work sessions. My team shared a common love for working at cafes, but also a common struggle to find new cafes that match our preferences—from suitable noise levels to specific ambiences. We also recalled how many of our peers share the same frustrations of driving 15+ minutes to find a cafe, just to leave due to a lack of seating or outlets.
How can we help college students to easily filter cafes for distance, availability, and atmosphere to satisfy their cafe experience?
Research
A BLEND OF RESEARCH
To better understand our target audience's struggles with finding cafes to work at, we surveyed 30+ college students and interviewed 4 university students. Our questions were mainly centered around exploring the pain points in visiting new cafes.
Key Findings
65% of students of students consider outlet availability important to their cafe search
55% of students strongly value the amount of seating at cafes
32% of students take location most into account and prefer cafes closer in distance
Overall, we discovered outlets, seating availability, Wi-Fi, and noise level are the most prioritized features respondents take into consideration when searching for cafes. Finding good nearby work environments are also big challenges faced when looking for cafes.
User Journey & Wireframes
STARTING THE CAFE JOURNEY
Utilizing our findings, we created user/task flows, information architectures, and sketched out wireframes to include pin point our target audience's cafe searching pain points. We then created a coffee-themed branding style to match our product's purpose and iterated through mid and high fidelity wireframes.
Low-Fi
Sketches of search functionality, cafe screen, and profile sections
Mid-Fi
Cafe Search and Cafe Page Mid-Fis
Cafe Profile Mid-Fi
Branding Style
Cafe Search and Cafe Profile Hi-Fis
Usability Testing
IS OUR APP FUNCTIONAL?
We then conducted usability testing to observe the account sign-up process, how users naturally navigate through the app's features, and see if any features were missing or hindered usability.
We collected the feedback from these players—along with our own playtesters—to solidify our final iterations of the game.
Features
Feature #1
CAFE MATCHING
One of our app's main features is the capability to match users to local cafes based on preferences. Users take a short quiz at the beginning of the onboarding process to determine the user's needs. The selected preferences are used to filter through cafes and recommend those suitable for the user, which streamlines the process of manually needing to search for the perfect cafe.
Cafe Matching functionality
Feature #2
CAFE LISTS
Find a cafe you like, but don't want to go to just yet? No worries! It can be saved within a Cafe List—a folder saved within a user's profile. This keeps all recommended cafes in one place and allows users to better store the cafes that satisfy their cafe experience
Cafe Lists functionality
Feature #3
POMODORO TIMER
As an added extra fun feature, we included a Pomodoro Timer to supplement productivity. A majority of our target audience had preferences for cafes that helped to promote focused work environments, so we felt a Pomodoro Timer would help to bring an extra sense of "focus".
Pomodoro Timer
We then created a case study presentation and presented our project to Design at UCI's member population.
Outcome
AWARDS & LEARNING
Our team was awarded the 3rd place prize out of nine total teams at Design at UCI's Project Teams Demo Day. I was glad to see our work was highly praised and recognized by both the panel of judges and members of the organization.
Reflection
FEEDBACK AND REDUCING BIAS
Takeaway #1: Reflecting on Feedback
Throughout the beginning of our ideation process, our team had many different ideas for app features and often struggled to align with the same ideas. I learned how to clearly iterate my own ideas, while also listening to feedback and ideas from others. I was able to reflect on all ideas and created compromises that incorporated everyone's contributions.
Takeaway #2: Reducing Research Biases
Reflecting on our research process, since we pre-established our idea of creating an app to find cafes for productivity, our research questions may have been biased. A majority of our questions related directly to asking what productivity features users would want in a cafe app, rather than asking if productivity features were useful. In the future, I would ensure my research statements do not include confirmation bias to ensure I create a viable solution to my initial problem statement.
This Project Team experience was very rewarding and it is a project that truly resonates with me—and my love for cafes. I am so thankful for my team and all the work we put into creating this prototype.