Spangled Drongo’s Mission is to brew the best tasting beer to save the most endangered species.
Every beer sold = 1m2 of native habitat saved
I was a part of the ambitious project to connect users to the habitat they’re saving and to visualize the tasting experience.
My Role:
UX Research, UX Design, UI Design
The Problem:
Beer drinkers are frustrated by unclear/ ambiguous tasting notes, as well as the lack of transparency from a brewery on their environmental impact and want greater understanding of both
Our High Level Goals:
Understand the pain points that beer drinkers face when shopping and what factors influence them
Undertake UX/UI website audit and make recommendations
Connect users to Spangled Drongo’s environmental impact
Make recommendations for supplementary services the brewery can offer to draw interest
Research Methods:
1:1 User Interviews
Online User Surveys
Competitor Analysis
Competitor Analysis
I examined the following direct competitors from both a service offering, and a ux/ui perspective:
Stone and Wood Brewery
Balter Brewery
Seven Mile Brewery
Wandana Brewery
From my early examination I found that there were some key themes across all breweries that were important to cross reference- environmental impact, beer-locating functions and live events.
I found that the competitors had a more captivating environmental impact story with a clearer transparency of their environmental impact. Competitors also had better visuals of the liquid of their beers, providing users with an understanding of the beer’s taste before purchasing. Both were highlighted as opportunities
Interview & Survey Insights
Unclear or ambiguous tasting notes were the biggest barrier to people trying new beers, as there was a big fear of being disappointed
“Hardest thing is branding- what am i actually getting? It’s hard to know what the beer tastes like purely from the can”
Users would feel more connected with a brand if there was a clear relationship between their purchase and a detailed positive environmental impact. Users want to know specifically how their consumer decisions help
The current website lacks detailed information about how the brewery supports native habitat regeneration, its environmental partners and how the process works. Users found it talks the talk, but no evidence of it walking the walk
“Transparency with environmental impact shows me the company actually does what it says it does. Working on the land, positive environmental impact is definitely a factor in my purchasing decisions”
“I don’t know which habitat is being protected, it’s a bit unclear to me the mechanics as to how they protect the environment”
5 x 1:1 Interviews undertaken
20 survey respondents
Personas
From synthesis of the research I identified two key personas; Larry the ‘consistent sipper’ and Eve the ‘conscious consumer’. There were some overlapping pain points surrounding difficulty in understanding what a beer might taste like, but some key differentiators when it came to purchasing decision making.
Journey
Eve’s beer purchasing decision was mapped out to understand exactly where there were frustrations and opportunities. During the consideration phase it was identified that that deciding on which beer to purchase was most challenging as she wanted to try a new product, but lacked confidence in tasting notes of products and ambiguous marketing.
Furthermore, as she is a conscious consumer, she was glad to be making a positive environmental impact via her purchase, but was frustrated by the lack of transparency with where her purchase was impacting.
How Might We
I developed a number of How Might We (HMW) statements that addressed user pain points. The problems were framed as open-ended questions to take a problem solving approach to the findings from our research, keeping the user at the forefront of all our efforts.
HMW Clearly illustrate Spangled Drongo’s flavor, so that beer drinkers know exactly what they’re purchasing, alleviating ambiguity, and confirming its suitability for the users’ occasion
HMW Link users to the habitat they’ve saved, creating a personal connection between their purchase and the habitat being impacted
HMW Demonstrate Spangled Drongo’s current and ongoing positive environmental impact that creates transparency on how the environmental impact mechanics work
Ideation and MVP
Renaming ‘thanks for your purchase of 24 beers’, to ‘thanks for saving 24 meters of native habitat like that found in XXXX’
Alerts stating what other users are purchasing- ‘Brendan just saved 24 meters in the Northern Rivers’- similar to pop ups on Amazon, ebay, etc
Interactive map where users can select the habitat that’s saved, with details about the land and the native animals found there
When users search for local stockists, an environmental fact or nature recommendation (waterfall, hike, camping, etc) will appear for their local area
Location specific experience- post code search option that recommends nearby restaurants who serve SD beer.
Beer style/type survey that identifies what type of beer the user would enjoy. Can be a general preference saved to their profile ongoing, and also a ‘quick dip’ when looking to try something new. ‘Take the quiz to see if you’ll like this beer?’
Taste reviews from users
User profiles that track total habitat saved across the country
Rewards program
User community submissions- ‘Buy a beer save a meter of habitat... throw a Spangled Drongo party and save a forest’
Rolling image of beer color when hovering over product
Venues can select where the beers sold in their venue are impacting
SD beer dating profile- Tinder for beers- create a profile and swipe right or left depending on your preferences
Detailed info online about the packaging and its environmental impact
Impact calculator- what animals benefit from a 4 m2, 8 m2, 24 m2 radius- depending on how many beers are bought. ‘The 12 beers you’ve bought will save 12 m2 of native habitat, which is just about the size of an echidna burrow’
For each beer, a quick video interviewing drinkers on the 3 words that come to mind about the flavor.
Detailed impact page with links to projects, videos of habitats and ways users can explore these areas
After brainstorming design solutions collaboratively with some additional designers I brought in for the task, I organised ideas on a prioritisation matrix along high-to-low value and difficult-to-easy axis points.
CRAZY 8’S
Eight ideas for improvements from a fast sketching and brainstorming exercise
Taking into account the businesses objectives, their start-up budget and concepts with the biggest impact, the stakeholders and I agreed to focus on the following:
Customized post-purchase messaging highlighting the environmental impact users have made
Interactive map where users can select the habitat that their purchase impacts
Visuals of beer colors to demonstrate flavor
Detailed impact page with links to projects, videos of habitats and ways users can explore these areas
Existing User Flow
To gain insights into the integration of new functionalities, we embarked on mapping out the current website features, purchasing flow and architecture.
Our objective was to establish an inviting environment for potential users while also catering to the needs of existing users and ensure that new features do not inhibit the user’s purchasing flow.
Revised User Flow
In the revised version we enhanced the user experience by addressing key pain points by:
including detailed environmental impact page
providing users with the ability to select the habitat they wish to save (optional)
inclusion of videos/infographics/tasting notes of beers
Low Fidelity Wireframes
V 2.0
Key Call Outs:
interactive map added for habitat selection
detailed habitat overlays
tasting notes visuals
dedicated environmental impact page
Testing
We undertook lo-fi wireframe usability testing to assess our simplified interface sketches and detect usability issues early in the design process. We had two primary tasks for users to complete; purchasing a beer, and selecting a habitat they wish to impact.
Testing Insights
From undertaking user journey testing via Maze, we found that we needed to revisit our information architecture and iterate how the different habitats were displayed to be easier to use on mobile devices. Overall feedback was positive with comments saying the flows were intuative to achieve
Hi-Fidelity Prototype
After 3 iterations, I refined the final prototype with additional user testing, especially surrounding visuals for the tasting notes graph. In developing the hifi prototype, I was sure to uphold the existing brand guidelines and overarching feel for the brewery to be grungy, with a grass roots feel to it
Visualising Taste
After
Before
Connection to Habitat
Post-purchase, users now have the option to select a habitat to save as a result of their purchase, creating buy-in for Spangled Drongo’s mission and a tangible link between customer and impact. A secondary function of this is also to create a database of natural habitats that users can physically visit, feeding into the project objective of creating an auxiliary reason for users to visit the site.
Habitat Selection Video
Takeaways
This project was a consistent reminder about the importance of ignoring one’s personal bias when designing and seeking user insights and validation to direct design decisions. Having another role within the organisation, meant that I had preconceptions as to what i thought we should design, when in fact that was not even close to what users wanted. Being a beer drinker myself, I had formed some ideas of what I would like to see on the website, but was pleasantly surprised when research uncovered many other concepts and user-needs I would not have foreseen as being important.
I worked on this project as the sole researcher and designer, and I felt it was important throughout to touch base with my mentor to run some ideas, and the overall development of the project, to ensure I wasn’t designing in an echo chamber. An important lesson in the collaborative nature of good design and the need to seek external feedback of one’s work.