CONTEXT
Why cafe?
In Taiwan, cafes have gradually become a unique culture. With Simple Kaffa from Taipei, Taiwan listed as No.1 on Big 7’s Best Coffee Shops in the world, Taiwan has become a rising hub of cafes with personality. You can always find unique cafes and enjoy their atmosphere.
And I’m a huge cafe guy. I even blog about them on Instagram, and I love to explore cafes.
Problem
Finding a good cafe in Taipei is overwhelming and inefficient
Over the years in Taipei, I often encountered pain points of cafe search and “saved” cafe organization as well. There are simply too many cafes in Taipei, and it’s hard to find a good cafe that really suits my needs. It’s often a hit or miss.
Thus, after discussion with a friend, we realized there’s an opportunity to help people find and organize cafes effectively. And that was when Cafe Co started.
solution
The go-to app for cafe goers in Taipei
Over the span of three months, we created the MVP of Cafe Co, a mobile app that helps young cafe goers in Taipei easily find a cafe that fits their needs. Users can find new cafes using customizable search or the “nearby cafes” map search.
Find a cafe with intent 🔍
Whether you like a specific cafe style or only go to a cafe with outlets and Wi-Fi, the filter system will help you find those cafes.
Find nearby cafes on map 📌
Just want to quickly find a cafe nearby? Check out all the cafes near your location!
Easily save & organize your cafes 🔖
No need to switch between Google Maps and Instagram. Save and organize your great finds all in one place.
mY CONTRIBUTION
End to end product design
As the sole designer, I was responsible for the entire end-to-end design, from conducting research to delivering the final crafts. In addition, I worked closely with the three engineers to bring the MVP version to life.
GOAL
Launch the iOS MVP app by end of March 2021
This was our main goal all along. And we all worked hard to try to accomplish this goal.
research
Understanding the cafe app market & users
During the majority of this project, I was actually serving in the Taiwanese military. With only weekends left to work, I had to be quick with my decisions and plan everything well. So, here were the methods I used:
Got to be quick!! ⚡
Competitive analysis
We wanted to know if there were any existing products out there that tried to solve the same problem. Based on our research, we found that there aren’t many well-established cafe search apps in the market.
Now, we did find a promising platform called Cafe Nomad. It had a massive database of cafes in Taiwan. After using it, we identified some advantages and disadvantages of the platform for our project.
Enormous database
Cafe Nomad has data for over 3k users in Taiwan - an astonishing number. We decided to use their open source API for our MVP.
Customizable filter
This feature is available after subscription. We like how this can make cafe search more efficient.
Filter by MRT / Filter by “Work”
These are two great filters that will make cafe search a lot faster.
Overwhelming
The cafe list is out there. Find the cafe yourself. Large list has its downside: users can get very overwhelmed.
Old UI
We believe the overall visual style can be improved upon.
User interviews
To test for the demand and understand our potential user’s cafe search process, we conducted 7 rounds of interviews with young cafe-goers. They go to a cafe at least once per week in Taipei. I then used affinity mapping to organize the qualitative insights.
Affinity mapping 🗺️
And based on the user interviews, I synthesized my notes and wrote down these insights:
01 | Instagram is the primary search tool 🔎
This was surprising because none of us used Instagram to find cafes. Every interviewee uses Instagram daily and follows cafe blog accounts, so they can sometimes find interesting cafes just by scrolling.
02 | “Work” & “Drink Coffee” ☕
These are the top incentives to go to a cafe.
03 | Cafe go-ers use Instagram, Google Map, or both to organize cafes ✍️
One noticeable insight is that a few of our interviewees find it inconvenient to switch between apps.
Survey
Based on the interviews, we formulated questions for an online survey. In the end, we received 30 responses from people in the Facebook group “Taiwan cafe community”. Here were the key insights:
Survey results
Based on the interviews, we formulated questions for an online survey. In the end, we received 30 responses from people in the Facebook group “Taiwan cafe community”. Here were the key insights:
01 | It’s efficient to find a new cafe 😓“Sometimes the reviews aren’t objective, so I have to go through a ton of community pages or blogs about the cafe.”
02 | Top incentive to go to a cafe - Work 78% 💻Relaxation (58%) and hangout (53%) were next.
03 | Top factors people look for in a cafe - Drinks 82.6% & No Time Limit 82.6%)These insights directly shaped our design decision when defining the preset categories for customizable search.
IDEATION
Lots of sketching and communicating
I sketched low fidelity wireframes to settle on the app visual structure and share my work with the engineers early on. Then, I created mid-fidelity wireframes to build out the interactions and flows.
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The very early sketches 😆
Mid-fidelity wireframes 📱
One thing to note is that after discussion with our iOS engineer, we decided to take out elements such as a filter bar on a map view since we had a tight deadline for our MVP launch.
testing
Our first beta testing
MVP of Cafe Co
We used the MVP prototype that our engineer built for our first beta testing with 7 users.
Insights
"Category" vs "Conditions"
People were confused about the difference. In reality, "category" is a shortcut to select multiple "conditions" at once.
Need more information about the cafe
Minimum cost, time to arrive, can reserve: There are a lot of things the users want to know about a cafe to make a decision to go or not.
Want to save cafes in the app
This was a feature we didn't test during the MVP beta because we realized it'll take a lot of time.
Change 1 | Naming
We changed "category" and "conditions" to "quick filter" and "filter by" to show the relation between the two fields.
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Change 2 | More cafe information
We added a variety of new information that will be displayed when the user selects a cafe. This will help them make better-informed decisions.
Change 3 | Save cafes
This was a highly requested feature by the users. Though we weren't able to implement it, I still explored what it can be like to save cafes.
final designs
Introducing Cafe Co!
The go-to app for any cafe goers to easily find and organize their favorite cafes ☕
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learnings
An amazing learning experience
In the end, we did not end up launching the iOS app due to Covid outbreak in Taipei and gradual return to school. However, I did take some more time to envision what the app could ideally look like, which is showcased in the Solution section.
As my first passion project with my friends, this was incredibly fun and rewarding to do. And I learned so much during this project.
01 | Test as soon as possible 🧪
Speed is king for this project. Initially, I was fixated on the overall vision of the app. Luckily, speaking to the engineers helped me only design the essential feature for our first beta tests.
02 | Consider different end-users 🗣️
We realized this much later, but we didn’t really consider the perspective of cafe owners. We should have talked to them early in the process to understand their needs & incentives for using our app.
03 | How to work with engineers 💻
This was the first time I worked with multiple engineers. This project helped me understand different engineer's perspective and what they value.
thank you
You're a superstar 🌟
Thank you for reading this case study! If you’re interested, feel free to check out my other projects 👇
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