Cat Café Homepage
Nothing beats a perfect cappuccino. Unless that cappuccino comes with a purring kitty by your side.
Cats, Coffee, & Cuddles is a cat café in need of a website to create a better customer experience when booking a visit. Currently, one must call to reserve a spot; with many kitties running around and a full service espresso bar, getting to the phone can be a challenge.
Lizzy owns CC&C. She is brilliant with the health and needs of her kitty café residents, but she does not know where to begin when creating a website. Lizzy hired a designer to make a mock homepage for her as she was having trouble visualizing how it could look. The designer made a homepage in Photoshop with images from Lizzy's photography collection.
The webpage mockup is purrfect! Her favorite shade of blue is featured for the menu tabs, images of current kitties up for adoption are cover photos, and her kitty latte art is front and center! Lizzy feels a certain amount of pride as she takes in the image of the café as the backdrop for the homepage. After seeing this mockup, she knew this was exactly what her four-legged friends needed to find their furr-ever homes.
Napkin in a Café
Napkin in a Café is a term to demonstrate inspiration hitting anywhere...and writing it down on whatever is available!
Our story involves 14-year-old Chloe and two friends from the dance studio. They have dreams of becoming a dance troupe and making a mark on the social media landscape. She spins a tale of her and her friends gathering at their local coffee place where they purchase large, sugary, caffeinated beverages, sit together at a table, and begin planning their website and social media accounts. Their minds are blown at how productive the meetup is which is only feeding into their sugar-based excitement.
The brainstorming session is written in Chloe's voice as she speaks to how a color palette was created thanks to inspiration from a header of a website and the most perfect logo. She describes this person her mom knows who knows all the "tech stuff." This is when a hand-drawn, wireframe mockup is created to allow Chloe to visualize the layout.
Dutch Bros Website Usability Testing Materials
Dutch Bros Coffee is a popular chain of coffee shops founded in 1992 by brothers Dane and Travis Boersma in Grants Pass, Oregon. They have taken off in the Pacific Northwest and continue to expand to the east and south.
Known by many college-aged students for their highly caffeinated and sugar rush inducing beverages, Dutch Bros connects with their audience well. However, they seem to struggle in one key area: their website.
Sharon, Sophie, and Caleb embark on a journey of mishaps, confusion, frustration, and laughter as they dissect the Dutch Bros site in an attempt to locate their biggest weaknesses and areas of opportunity. While sometimes fun and games, the actual process is taken seriously as usability, specifically accessibility, can make or break a customer experience.
The first report covers the testing materials we gave our participants for the study.
Dutch Bros Website Usability Mockups
Usability tests help researchers and designers determine which weak spots will be addressed first.
"Every step of the way, take the user into account as you develop your product." ~James Garrett, The Elements of User Experience
Garrett's quote guided the research team and provided direction for determining which opportunities were the most pressing. The three isolated as the most egregious were:
*Homepage Improvements
*Map Improvements
*Beverage Customization
Dutch Bros User Research and Persona Development
The research team implemented a survey to get an idea of how Dutch Bros main audience may look like. Based on the average answers, the team put together two personas depicting the typical day of a Dutch Bros customer. What did those personas look like?
As the numbers came together, it revealed a picture of a female aged 25-44 who worked full-time and was college educated on some level. They were also tech savvy, were online very frequently, and were familiar with Dutch Bros as a brand.
Dutch Bros Full Usability Report
The grande finale of the team's work culminates in the full usability report. What did they find out?
*In general, participants did not like the website.
*Frustration levels were high.
*Competitor sites have a better layout by comparison.
*Throw out the drink section and start over!
