Case Study: Juniper
original app concept, research, and design
The Why:
Plenty of apps exist for aficionados of beer, wine, and whiskey. Gin—especially premium craft gin—is one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic products in the global alcohol market. Gin is widely diverse, and new trends emerge constantly. So why not have an app dedicated to gin?
The Process
I started with research: the first step was to write and distribute a survey to find a user group. I got about 50 survey responses and was able to interview six of them (most remotely).
From this data, I created fictional personas to represent my interviewees’ interests, habits, and needs. I made empathy maps. This led to making user flows and prioritizing features for a minimum viable product.
Finally, I hand-drew a low-fi prototype, used that to further elaborate the big picture user flow, and then turned to digitally prototyping in Adobe XD. Each iteration led to further improvements in navigation and UI design, as I learned to consider important details such as back buttons, confirmation screens, and the complexity of search functions.
I began this project in my second semester of design classes. The original UI design style underwent some changes over time, starting with the cool forest tones of an actual juniper plant, and finally landing on a trendy aqua and coral palette.
The Product
Juniper is still a work in progress, but it’s come a long way from the initial concept. The current prototype focuses on the search function and demonstrates the capacity to search in multiple ways (through browsing filters, filling out a text field, or a combination of the two).
