Striving to answer the question: What is the Future of Mobile Coffee Vending Experiences?
Introducing Bean Buddy, the ultimate coffee companion designed to elevate your daily brew experience. Inspired by the charm of early 2000s games, our innovative coffee sleeve brings nostalgia and functionality creating a coffee community. With its ability to navigate to wherever the coffee bike is located, initiate payment, and interact with neighboring cup sleeves, Bean Buddy ensures every sip is a delightful journey.
Our Why:
Community.
When it comes down to it, coffee is about connection- whether it be with the barista while they make your drink, or a coffee date with your secret admirer. The difference can be summed up in the fact that asking someone to get water with you carries a drastically different emotional weight than asking someone out to coffee. This was our driving ethos throughout this project.
Collaboration:
We saw an opportunity to go where no coffee truck has gone before, via a collaboration with the product design studio. With their e-bike as the foundation, this experience has the capacity to travel over multiple terrains, indoors AND outdoors, bringing community beyond the cafe
BeanBuddy: The Teaser
Background Research
We conducted research starting with a literature review, competitor swot analysis, moving onto interviews with consumers and employees at coffee shops and cafes, a survey, and ethnographic observation. We aimed to get to the heart of why individuals purchase coffee and spend time in cafes.
Research Synthesis
Based on our research, we created an affinity map about why people purchase coffee and go to cafes, 4 distinct user personas based on our interview and survey results, and a customized journey map for each user.
Research Findings: Getting to the Heart of it
Based on our research, we determined 3 key insights:
1. Users feel validated in their preferred cafe experience because their relationships, time, and feelings are validated in one.
2. Users prefer a human-centric ordering process because they like the human interaction and perceived authenticity of a human-made beverage.
3. Users attach to a coffee community because of resonating brand values which are demonstrated through brand identity.
From these key insights, we drew 3 statements that guided our concept development:
1. How might we create a sensory experience that respects the user’s time and relationships?
2. How might we preserve perceived authenticity and humanity in our cafe experience?
3. How might we leverage symbols and clear values to form brand identity?
Concepts
We created over 20 unique concepts that each corresponded with at least one of the three statements we used to guide our ideation. Collecting extensive feedback included a pin-up session in class, as well as online professional critique from our sponsors at Cognizant. From here, we refined it into a finalized concept for testing.
Throughout our ideation, we kept in mind the unique mobility enabled by our collaborative studio's work. Pictured above is a render that they created to represent their e-bike cafe design. (image courtesy of Haeun Ryoo, Gazal Mathur, Mili Parikh, and Reetu Maran
User Testing
Our final concept included a reusable cup sleeve where users can collect unique digital stamps from each coffee bike location. The silicone cup sleeve contains magnetic charging, an OLED display which displays the digital stamps, and NFC tag allowing payment to be processed through the sleeve itself, and magnetic closure.
In addition to displaying digital stamps, the OLED display is home to Bean, our coffee mascot. Bean does everything from notifying you when the coffee bike is open, to having fun animations that mirror your actions.
Our testing setup consisted of a walkthrough test, where we simulated a typical cafe experience with Bean Buddy, using paper cup sleeves and printed out Bean "animations". In the first part of the test, users navigated to the coffee bike using a simple arrow method. Next, users ordered at the coffee bike, as we observed how they naturally interacted with the charging hub for the cup sleeve that is located on the bike cafe. We paid special attention to how they interacted with the barista.
We also conducted a "perception test", where we showed users illustrations of our mascot characters, and tested whether or not they could correctly identify what each illustration represented. We took copious notes and conducted post test interviews in order to understand people's thoughts and feelings while going through this experience.
We refined our design in 3 sectors: Clarity, Communication, and Customization. Related to clarity, we changed the navigation to feature more clear directions to the bike's location. For communication, we created a charging hub that puts the bean buddy display at an upward angle rather than being low to the counter and out of line of sight. Finally, we modified our Bean Buddies to feature only one character, but have customization options including accessories, props, and costumes. This was all based on feedback we received during testing
Bean Buddy: Final Design
Bean Buddy: The Experience, a Walkthrough
Work, Play, Eat, and Study with Bean Buddy!
Bean Buddy is an all in one coffee companion. It’s comprised of a silicone cup sleeve, with an embedded touch screen e-ink display, an NFC radio to connect to your phones GPS, and a battery that utilizes magnetic wireless charging. We anticipate that this technology will be available in the next 3 years
We chose to go with silicone because it is heat resistant, water resistant, and durable. The silicone we chose is also very stretchy and has a high friction coefficient allowing it to stick to various cup sizes.
Because the silicone is water resistant, the cupsleeve can be easily wiped off in cases of condensation and spillage.T he touch screen e-ink display is used to display and customize your bean buddy as well as facilitate all the functions of the bean buddy.
In addition to the BeanBuddy cup sleeve, we created a countertop where the magnetic charging takes place. This bar is collapsible and light, and placed on the front of our counter. It gives the barista a separation of space form the customer without inhibiting conversation. When a user places their sleeve down, the bar charges their display while they are waiting for a drink.
The payment makes our users have to focus less on fumbling with their wallet and allows the barista to focus more on what they enjoy: serving coffee, and creating positive social interactions.
Our bar moves your sleeve slowly down the table to give you and those in line a sense of how close you are to getting your drink; so when you get to the far right of the cart, you’ve already created space for the next person in line.
We created UI wireframes for key points to be displayed on the Bean Buddy screen. These include (L-R): navigating to the coffee bike, paying for your drink, and the bean buddy wardrobe, which houses accessories that can be collected at each coffee bike stop
To prove our concept, we made a physical prototype using fabric, elastic, and magnets. We then shifted gears to start experimenting with silicone. We lasercut an acrylic mold then mixed two different types of silicone to fit our needs of the model. We decided on a softer stretchier silicone for the base and and a stiffer yet still flexible silicone for the panels. will improve
Notes: This was a collaborative project. Aside from working on a team for the Bean Buddy product, I focused on storytelling and graphic design for our presentations. See link for examples: : https://www.figma.com/file/UASk3nNTuqJGs3N6MBcgEq/BeanBuddy-Presentation-Examples?type=design&node-id=0%3A1&mode=design&t=2XbLCNStgCZAcX8c-1
