Less Is More — Blue Bottle Coffee UX Design Philosophy
I believe we all heard of the idea of “Less is More,” a well-known quote representing the idea of the absence of unnecessary features, treasures a life in quietness, and aims to reveal the innate character of materials, which is initiated from Zen culture and further developed into minimalism in the 1970s. Blue Bottle Coffee is representative of minimalism in the coffee industry. From its design, such as logo, color, interior design, to its services, such as website browsing experience and App purchasing experience, are all follow a consistent rule of stripping everything down to its essential quality and achieving simplicity. This blog will mainly focus on the practice and application of the less-is-more philosophy in its website/app design and digital user experience.
Website
Understanding the objective of a business plan is always the primary step to starting a business. Clearly, Blue Bottle Coffee has figured out its goal on its website — to sell coffee beans.
On the main page, a picture of its latest best quality coffee bean is first sight. There is no description, only the coffee bean’s name and a simple image of a cup of coffee, and a bottom direct to the purchasing page. Straight forward while eye-catching. Because there is no spare content, consumers can easily capture the critical information and be directed to the purchasing page efficiently once they are interested.
Besides the unignorable main page advertisement, Blue Bottle Coffee also tries to pull its website visitors into purchasing coffee beans on other pages. Next to the iconic blue bottle on the menu bar, the first row besides “shop” and “subscriptions” leads to a coffee subscription. As I played my mouse on the menu bar, it immediately caught my attention and left a strong impression. Simple but memorable. Who will forget the word they have already seen three times at first sight?
What is worth mentioning is the customized pop-up subscription window under each different page. When I first enter the website, a pop-up window with the title “Get updates from Blue Bottle” shows on the top of the page, while when I click the LOCATION bottom, the pop-up window is now titled “More Cafes Coming Soon.” Even though the window looks the same, different wordings can make consumers feel the company’s character is caring and detail-orientated.
Mobile App Design
Blue Bottle Coffee mobile app is made for order instead of selling coffee beans. Through the app, customers can order and customize their coffee, food, brew tools, merchandise, and even dog treat.
Let consumers order efficiently is the primary goal of the app. The loading page is the recommended merchandise and signature coffee. The head of the page is the menu bar of coffee types, including cold brew, espresso, pour-over, and other five more coffee categories. It is interesting that no like other order apps, which prefer to list down the food category in a column on one page, Blue Bottle Coffee choose to row it down and put the detail of the coffee type under the subpage of each category. For me, a person with a choice phobia who tends to decide the category of a coffee and then go for a specific one; rather than browsing millions of indistinguishable products at first, the interface of Blue Bottle Coffee definitely helps me a lot.
The layout of the product introduction page seems to be verbose; however, it also follows the rule of “less is more.” One product image, customized option filter, coffee brewing description, calories, and allege inform are the main components of an order page. Instead of putting all the messages together, Blue Bottle Coffee chooses to layout the customized option at first, then the detailed description of the product. It gives customers a choice to decide whether they will read the full article or just order and grab the coffee. The philosophy of providing the basic need for all while adding something useful for partial is being used in the best possible way on the app.
Summary
Each brand has its own personality; the problem is finding its own and sticking with it. Blue Bottle Coffee did a great job, making it unique and successful among all the retail coffee shops.
This is Yang’s blog. Thanks for your reading. And see you next week :)
