Club Wise — Whisky Wisemen Society
UX & UI Team | Mobile App Prototype
For the first community project as part of the UX RED Academy program, we were asked to create an application for Club Wise, a member based group of The Whisky Wisemen Club. The goal was to design a mobile app that added value to the membership and strengthen the club wise community. The project timeline was three weeks.
Team
Taking on this opportunity was a team of User Experience (UX) and User Interface Designers (UI).
Joseph and my role (Lara) as UX designers was to collect research, take those findings into designs, test and readjust while working closely with the UI team to share results and findings.
About — Whisky Wisemen Society
Whisky Wisemen Society (WWS) is a international not-for-profit organisation started in Vancouver, founded on a love for whisky and the desire to share that with a like-minded community while improving themselves and the betterment of their community. Since January 2013, WWS have hosted public #socialwhisky events on the #thirdThursday of every month.
Club Wise
The mission of Club Wise is to bring together vibrant individuals and create a personalized community experience. In addition to the #thirdThurdays, member receive private invitation to four event programs throughout the year. Each event have the following structure: Education / Community / A love for whisky
The Challenge
The challenge the organisation faced was that the interaction of members was limited to the WWS website, social media and person-to-person contact both before and after club events.
The Opportunity
Our opportunity with the application was that it would act as a tool to strengthen the club wise community (so as to retain membership and attract new members) by in turn adding value to the membership.
Club Wise Goals
Whisky Wisemen requested the following features/functions:
- Educate members on Whisky
- Member-to-member communication
- Member profile & directory
- Club communications — event updates, calendar, news
- Facilitate charitable giving/engagement
We started our research by focusing on people who liked whisky and who were established in their career. We hypothesised that the typical person who would join the club would be someone who would be attracted to a more of a casual type of networking where creating meaningful connection was more a priority than handing out as many business cards as possible.
We started off collecting research using survey’s and user interviews.
As we didn’t have direct access to members, we focused on whisky drinkers knowledge of whisky, pain points of networking and the qualities they look for in a club to join.
Survey Results
- 60% male
- 57% / 26–32 Age group
- Iphone Users
- High social media activity
- 43% High level Work positions (Managerial roles)
Interview Key Insights
“Networking events are difficult because you have to go through the barrier to talk to someone to have a conversation. I feel that they could be forced.”
“I like doing charity work as it makes me feel good about using my time and skill to go back to the community”
Competitive Comparative Research
Conducting competitive /comparative research posed a challenge as we could not access paid membership apps. We however compared similar apps in the alcohol, networking and events categories.
At the core of all these apps were:
- A sense of community via membership contribution or participation
- Member profile and visibility of participation
- Ability to communicate or connect with other members
- Tools that assisted or supported participation to the community
Design Direction
To consolidate our data from the user interviews, as a team we created a affinity diagram, grouping common notes to find trends and themes of our primary persona.
From the affinity diagram, the UI were able to see key words from the question “Describe your perfect Whisky setting”, which informed two different style directions.
After attending a Club Wise #ThirdThursday and conducted A/B of these two directions with members, it concluded that along with the client feedback, that the preference was for a modern twist but still using traditional whisky colours. See below for the final design direction.
Meet Jack Daniels
The pun is intended but our persona is no joke! We consolidated our data and summarised our findings from the affinity diagram to create our primary persona (typical member) of Club Wise, their goals, frustrations and motivations.
Jack, in his 30s working in the financial sector is an driven individual who is dedicated to advancing his career. However, Jack is not ‘all work and no play’ kind of guy. He likes to be social and part of a community of like minded individuals, that make it easier to form connections.
Although established in his field, he understands the value of extending his network and developing his skills for his career. Jack however is frustrated by the typical networking event that feel forced and inauthentic. He has found he has more success in making meaningful connections through causal settings with people who have a common interest.
After receiving a whisky recommendation, Jack is frustrated as he knows his current method of storing the name in his phone by take a a note or a picture, is ineffective and had to refer back to.
Research Summary
In summary we concluded that there were four main areas of focus/ pillars of the club. Through our research the importance of community and belonging was the main concern or need of the user.
Proceeding forward to design —it must support one or more of these foundational needs of the user.
Now that we have all of the ingredients (the research), we next need the recipe (planning) to create the perfect whisky… I mean app. Planning is important to consolidate our findings to effectively balance the needs of the user and business motives.
Feature List Prioritisation
We compared the feature list prioritisation of the user and the business to find alignment. From our research it was clear that both parties saw the need and value of communication tools. However there was misalignment with benefits/ deals as a priority. As this was a business goals, we lowered its importance but didn’t remove it from the app completely.
Scenario & Storyboard
Because Club Wise is event base (time specific) we focused on a scenario when it would fill a need for Jack. We theorised that because time efficiency was a top priority of Jack, that if there was a quicker way of connecting with a member other than email (which takes time to collect and connect with someone later) he would align with his motivations of being organised and time efficient.
Because Jack needs to be able to quickly find a member and won’t be able to give his full attention to the task at a event, it indicated to us that it had to be easily accessible from the home screen.
Now that Jack has connected with another member during the event, he is already set up to use the app post-event. Because connecting with members is important for Jack we also had to strategise how we can maximise this goal throughout the app and not just at events.
User Interface Design planning stages
Based off of the research and mood boards James and Crystal created style tiles to enhance the user experience by visually conveying the mood and sense of exclusivity. They designed the UI of the app based off of the following two style tiles.
We began the design of the app with paper wireframes based on the users featured list and business goals.
From our research of similar apps in the space of networking and events, a common thread was the use of a tab. Although a tab did align with our aim of Jack’s need for accessibility, quickness and ease, we weren’t sure if was needed on all screens.
In order to determine if we needed a tab or not we did some early testing (as seen in the above photo). Our testing revealed that the user expected the tab to be available on most screens except when completing a specific task, like buying a event ticket.
Prototype
From our digital sketches we worked closely with the user interface team to create a high-fidelity prototype.
During our second testing phase using digital mockups our testing highlighted that the icons and names used in the tabs also needed to be well defined and obvious where they went.
Users prior expectations of where they would find content, provided further insight. This forced us to make a significant alteration to the whisky feature page as one user tester pointed out that,
“three of the tools on this page were related to the individual member and the other to the club. How do these individual features relate back to the club?”
Ultimately left unchecked, it would create confusions and frustration to the user. As a result we made the following changes to the Whisky Barrel section:
- Changed the Whisky Barrel section to My Profile
- My Shelf and Badges would live on their profile
- My Scanner would be available under My Shelf as a tool used to add a whisky to a list.
- Clubhouse would be moved to the dashboard and as a news and blog
By moving all items relating to the user under my profile, further testing confirmed that yes that anything relating specifically to them they would head to My Profile to look.
As the backbone of the club is its community we ensured that there were always evidence of members and their contribution from reviews of whiskies to members attending events.
Final Prototype
See below for the working prototype or https://invis.io/CG97HVCBJ
Next Steps & Reflection
The next steps for this app would be to conduct further testing with current club app members, as we were unable to originally reach them. This further testing would provide a more in-depth insight to confirm what feature needed further refinement or if they were necessary. In terms of feasibility, as the club is a non-profit, we would have to speak directly to developers to determine the minimum viable prototype according to their budget.
For future team projects I will make the effort to involve the UI team early in the UX research and the planning stage in order to for them not only to understand our process but to have a more thorough understanding of the persona and the business goals.
From a team perspective — what worked really well was the teams hard work ethic and individuals taking the initiative. As a result our team came together at the final presentation and we felt we equally contributed to the project. We really enjoyed working with the client and from our research we can now understand what makes the Whisky Wisemen Club a fantastic organisation to be a part of.
