Craft Beer UX Case Study

fernandocomet
Prototypr
Published in
6 min readOct 24, 2018

A whole UX Research for a Craft Beer Distributor

STAR Methodology (situation, tasks, actions, result)

For describing what I exactly did in the project, I am using here STAR methodology (situation, tasks, actions, result). This is usually used on interviews so you can imagine you with me in an interview having a coffee or a Craft Beer and talking about anything related to this case study.

I would say this is a mix between UX Design and Service Design case study. I really enjoyed taking part in this real project.

Situation

This is about an american Craft Beer distributor in a big city in Spain. He is called Kevin, and he is setting up a new business in a new and emerging beer market.

He knows a lot about Craft Beer, all the trends coming from the States and other countries, he has even lived in a Brewing factory, so I keep my eyes opened everytime I meet Kevin. We have regular meetings every month, so he can help me with every question that I have. I work in this project for six months aprox.

The main issue was this: Kevin had not nothing digitalised about his business, every order he had, he received it by his phone. So this took him a lot of time (making invoices by hand, many phone calls, lots of unordered orders, etc.)

Tasks

  • Immersion and understanding of the Craft Beer market and supply chain
  • Solve Kevin´s main problems from the business and design point of view

Actions

Before taking any action I made a big benchmark of what is it really Craft Beer, how are other countries working with this product, what are the perspectives, who is consuming this, and where.

Also I made the immersion: I went to many bars and pubs, sometimes with Kevin, sometimes on my own. I just sat there and watched different behaviours, taking notes of everything. How do barmans work? What are the light conditions? How do the waiters’ beer taps work? How are the people going to these bars?

I will explain point by point all the actions I took, these ones:

  • Study of Actors, Product, Craft Beer Market, Supply Chain and Product Cycle
  • UX Strategy blueprint, Lean UX Canvas
  • User Persona, Customer Journey
  • Problem description, User Statements, User Stories, How might we?
  • MVP Proposal, Sitemap AI, Screens design and Prototype,

Actions taken in the project:

Actors

Mainly there are four:

  • Breweries: Main producers of Craft Beer
  • Distributors: They take the beer from breweries to bars
  • Bars, shops, restaurants: These ones have special beer taps and they sell beer
  • Drinkers: Could be you or me, or anyone having a beer.

Product

Craft Beer is a very special product. Do not be fooled, there are many brands selling beer at an industrial level and call themselves “craft beer”, to be really “craft beer” it must have the following characteristics:

Market and perspectives

Also I made a benchmark about market perspectives, mainly I will say that Craft Beer business is expected to grow a lot not only in Spain but also in all Europe.

Timeline

Thinking about supply chain and touch points. This is the timeline where my customer, moves: From breweries to sellers (bars, restaurants and shops).

Craft Beer Cycle, Product Flow

The four actors and the product cycle. Think about one think: Breweries are always innovating and trying new things, so the production is not the same for every week. If you go to a Craft Beer bar and go again next week, it is really possible that you won´t find the same beer for the many taps they have.

UX Strategy Blueprint

Going for business, thinking about distribution business:

Lean UX Canvas

Thinking about solutions in the supply chain:

User Persona

For the bars, shops and restaurants:

Customer Journey

This is a typical day of Kevin:

Problem Identification

Analysing and identifying Kevin main problems´:

Some sketching about this:

User Statements

This is what Kevin needs to solve his problems:

User Story

General feeling about Kevin.

HMW: How might we?

Let´s make some questions to focus on problems:

Path to MVP Proposal

A MVP: Minimal Viable Product. The main idea is to give Kevin a digital proposal for his business. As it is a change for bars, he can offer special discounts to customers using the platform.

In this platform you will be able to see news about beers, to see all the catalogue, to make orders and see the order status.

It will be a web app as it is cheaper.

Sitemap AI

Thinking about Information Architecture. This is only a brunch for the product Keving is distributing. The catalog has more eight breweries, each one of those has about ten different brands, these brands can be sold either in barrels or in bottels, and barrels can have different capacity, also bottles are sold in three different kind of boxes. So it is about 500 different products (by now, the business is growing).

Screens

Desktop and Smartphone

Kevin will have a CMS to upload and maintain the catalogue. Bars will have an access to the dealer selling platform, mobile first. It has a tab bar menu with four main buttons: Catalogue, Orders, News, Profile. So, the main idea is to keep it simple (KISS!!!).

Screens of the web App.

Prototype

Finally I made a prototype for the web app.

You can see online prototype here. With this prototype I went to different bars with Kevin to show and test it. Mainly they liked the it a lot.

The results

I think it is a question of time that Kevin goes on with this project, his business has grown a lot, and digitization is knocking on his door.

It´s been a pleasure to work in this mix of UX and Service Design project.

There´s also a dropbox file with working documents, you can see it here.

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Published in Prototypr

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Written by fernandocomet

Design Technologist | NoCode Specilist | Webflow Expert | Framer | Shopify | WP DIVI | AI | Research

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