Project
Brewker
Start
Sept. 2022
End
On-going
Area
Tools
Visual Design
Brewker needed a portal that gave breweries the ability to manager their clients, consumers, and inventory all in one place. The user experience must be straight-forward and easy to navigate so that placing orders is seamless and, most importantly, fast. The end goal is to curate an innovative marketplace between breweries and bars.
BACKGROUND
CHALLENGE
Design a marketplace management platform that combines all the features breweries use between multiple services to create a seamless search, sell, and delivery experience.
By combining and improving upon the top feature set of competitors, Brewker simplifies the process of finding clients, saving repeat orders, and sharing new beverages.
SOLUTION
Brewker is a hyper-local marketplace that connects drink enthusiasts, bar and restaurant owners, and local retailers with their favorite neighborhood breweries, meaderies and drink designers.
What is Brewker?
Breweries shouldn't have to settle for an ‘okay’ experience on Brewker. The key to improvement is just a little exploration into the specialized services used for distribution. By understanding the unique needs of breweries and seeking input on the distribution experiences they wish to have, we can really create an awesome product that empathizes with its users and caters to their needs.
Knowing The Audience
Progress starts with knowing what went wrong and learning what will take us the extra mile. The goal is not only correct, but to surpass expectations. To prepare myself, I spoke with four managers from local breweries in Ohio. I spoke with Dalton Union Brewery and Winery, Derive Brewing Company, Edison Brewing Company, and Land Grant. Each of these breweries is in the Greater Columbus and Cincinnati area where Brewker operates.
During my discussions, I arrived over and over again at the same important question:
What does a brewery need to be able to distribute B2B? Breweries could all agree on a few important features for distribution.
Inventory Management
stock and availability
Sales and Marketing
Promoting products
Order Processing
receive and place orders
Billing and Invoicing
trackable transactions
Distribution Method
Get goods to buyers
User-Friendly Interface
Easy to use
Customer Management
Database of contacts
User-Friendly Interface
Easy to use
The Old Design
After our discussion, I let each manager explore the current user flow on Brewker. While most breweries were quick to compliment, I really wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of what wasn’t working. After all, they had all heard of Brewker but none were currently utilizing our software. More often than not, the managers felt the current site visually unappealing, seemed unintuitive, and just have the feel of a trust-worthy platform. Ultimately, the current Brewker site didn’t have the competitive edge to compete with other platforms or self-distribution.
Knowing The Competition
After gathering what features were important for a distribution platform and receiving constructive feedback the on the current Brewker website, I wanted to gather some insights on some market competitors. For companies who want to independently manage their sales, local beer wholesalers are usually their go to option for local distribution. Brewker wants to combine the local and personalized feel of local beer wholesalers with the establish and professional feel of Provi and Drizly. Services like Provi and Drizly are larger scale competitors in the industry. I was able to get much feedback on forums like Reddit and reviews in addition to my own observations while exploring their platforms. Provi is a B2B distributor while Drizly is B2C but both offer great feedback when looking at what we can do right and what we can improve upon to stand out in the industry.
condensed versions
Instead of just taking the research and responses and trying to take on the redesign right off the bat, we needed more. In the Define stage of the Brewker redesign, we pinpoint the specific challenge we're addressing. This ensures that everything focuses on the main problem and the solution we're seeking. During this stage, we want to describe the problem in a way that is broad enough to cover all aspects but not so vague that it becomes unclear. The goal is to strike a balance, providing enough scope for creativity while avoiding overly limiting constraints for our platform
Creating a User Persona
Creating a user persona is essential for the project to redesign, it provides a concrete understanding of our target audience, in this case, brewery managers like Caleb Peters. By understanding their preferences, frustrations, and motivations, we gain insights that assist with user-centric design decisions. We want to ensure the platform meets users’ specific needs. This approach instills empathy, improves the user experience, and increases the chances of adoption as the platform should align closely with the challenges and aspirations of its users.
What is Caleb Struggling With?
To really understand and empathize with Caleb, he need a back story. What pain point is he struggling with and how can Brewker help solve his problems? Our storyboard helps illustrate our user’s journey and steps he has to take to get exposed to Brewker and let Brewker address the struggles he is experiencing.
Brewker isn’t a new company. While they did have several issues with design and much feedback for improvement, there was an existing user base. I wanted to keep the redesign similar enough to the original design that previous users would be able to stay on board and integrate seamlessly but I also wanted users to recognize an obvious improvement. I wanted the website to feel fresh and approachable to potential new breweries who might be interested in joining Brewker.
Mapping the Site
I decided on creatings a sitemap for the redesign. The goal is to reoragnize the pages of the current website into soemthing more understandable and navigable. This visual representation helps ensure that all necessary pages and functionalities are accounted for, leading to a more coherent and intuitive user experience. Additionally, the site map can serve as a reference point for developers and front end to figure out what pages we’ll need in the end.
The Essentials
I then needed a conceptual idea of what I wanted the pages to look like.
Creating a prototype that feels like a real website is vital for proper testing. If I’m too busy having to explain how something functions because I didn’t prototype it well enough, I’m going to miss out on important and feedback insights from my users. If all is done propery, it should be a seamless transition between pages, navigating the Brewker site.