Bubbly is a boba tea app developed to incentivize users to try new drinks while making the online ordering experience less stressful.
When ordering boba, people are often overwhelmed by the amount of choices and have no idea what the drink looks or tastes like. We believe by creating an app that makes the boba ordering process more convenient through updated hours, including reviews, and providing visuals can appeal to users who get overwhelmed by the amount of choices and steps in the drink ordering process. This will help them feel more confident in knowing what to order and provide a more time efficient experience.
Bubbly is an app that incentivizes users to explore different boba drinks by having visuals, reviews/recommendations, and live status updates of their order to make their online experience less stressful.
UX / UI Designer
3 Weeks
Creating and developing an app from start to finish
Figma
Google Drive
Zoom
Interviews were conducted with 5 individuals who have any experience with ordering boba. We asked questions based on the 3 objectives below to discover their experiences with ordering boba in person an online to find their pain points in the process.
OBJECTIVE 1: How do people order boba?
OBJECTIVE 2: Why do people order boba?
OBJECTIVE 3: What kind of experiences do people have when ordering boba?
To assist in analyzing the answers given during the interviews, an affinity map was made to organize and help to visualize which experiences were alike and different. It also helped in identifying what features to include when creating the lo-fi prototype.
The interviewees responses were condensed into more specific categories, and further reduced into categories that were of the utmost importance during the boba experience.
Users were overwhelmed by the numerous drink selections and would prefer more visuals and recommendations when ordering,
After gathering this feedback, we realized that there needs to be a better way to view ingredients and show feedback on what a drink is like on an app.
Having a better understanding users’, wants, needs, and frustrations helped us gain valuable insights to create our user persona, Johnny. Throughout the project, we made sure to always refer back to and base all design decisions on this persona.
A difficult setback that my team and I had was consolidating all of our features into one app. We each pitched ideas that were crucial to the users needs, but decided to cater the app towards what he users that we interviewed needed most.
My team and I started to develop our first prototype conveying our user flow and features of Bubbly.
Some users explained that there was an overwhelming amount of information and they felt like they were scrolling a lot on the home screen
Our solution to this was eliminating the popular and saved drinks and instead exhibited wait time, rewards points, and order history
While we planned to have images of the drinks for the ordering process, we had to consider whether having solely the image would help the user in a positive way
We were faced with many challenges when choosing the color palette, icons, typography, and what we wanted to be illustrated
We decided to create the color palette based on milk tea colors making sure that they passed the accessibility test
Users struggled with understanding the “wow” factor of our app, wondering what set us apart from another ordering app
To solve this confusion, we decided to emphasize our reviews portion of the app to show customer reviews of a particular drink
Continuously Iterate
There is no perfect solution in anything, there is always room for improvement. If the project were to continue, my team and I would conduct more user tests to indicate how we can further improve our users’ experiences.
Refer Back to the Purpose of the Proejct
My team had a lot of trouble staying focused on the main idea of our app and lost our way through the middle of the project. We were able to get back on track by referring back to our how might we statement and list of goals we created at the beginning of our brainstorming process.
Speak Up
Throughout the duration of this project, there were a couple of design disagreements amongst our team members. While in the beginning I was worried about sharing my opinion on things, I learned that speaking up sometimes works out for the better, and that my solutions are valuable.
Stay Involved
I am not typically one to lead a group, but for this project, I was able to take some of the reins with one of my teammates, and felt that it was a great experience with not only learning about my leadership style, but also finding solutions to conflicting ideas.
Keep Going
I had many struggles with balancing this project with school. Although I was under pressure with a deadline, it helped me prepare for real-world deadlines, and helped nurtured my growth in time-management.
