Type

Individual Project

Duration

6 Weeks

Design Tools

Figma, Protopie, Cinema 4D

Project Categories

UI/UX Design, Design for business

Total Wine & More is a large, family-owned, privately held American alcohol retailer founded and led by brothers David Trone and Robert Trone. Total Wine & More was named Retailer of the Year by Market Watch in 2006, Beverage Dynamics in 2008, and Wine Enthusiast Magazine in 2004 and 2014

1. Project Overview

Introduction of Sensory

Prompt

Product tastings are generally pretty low-tech and don’t leverage digital well to enhance the event experience. Information about what is being sampled and the attendees’ notes are either communicated verbally or via paper/pencil so there’s a high risk of being forgotten or lost once the event is over.

Problem

For Totalwine, they lacks an efficient digital tool to manage two kinds of tasting events, (1) in-store informal event and (2) in-class formal event, easily. And for customers, the evaluation sheets is a little bit difficult for them to finish. 

Objectives

01. Efficient

Sensory is an efficient tool for business to receive evaluation from customers.

02. Intuitive

All of the evaluation index in the evaluation sheet should be easy for user to understand, reduce the time required for users to fill in as much as possible.

03. Instructional

Assist freshman and intermediate users how to evaluate the wine scientific.

Senario1 - IN-STORE WINE TASTING EVENT

During a In-store wine tasting event, the tasters are random users, they just walk in the store and taste the wine they are interesed in. In this activity, the staff request the users to take part in the evaluation and give them discount coupons in return. All the interaction is done on a tablet for work. 

Staff in TotalWine can create a wine tasting event in the system and add wines into lists in advance before the event.

Then staff can invite the customers in the store to finish the wine evaluation. 

Senario 2 - IN-CLASS WINE TASTING EVENT

During an in-class wine tasting event, all taster are identified. They will spend 45 minutes or more to learn how to evaluate a wine with a lot of companions together. In this activity, each attendees need to finish all of their work in their own device. 

Senario: In-class wine tasting is a formal tasting event, participating users participate by signing up for events. 

Interaction: The staff in Totalwine can create a in-class wine tasting event, then create wine list and add attendees into the event. Furthermore, the stuff can hide the label and name of the wine to conduct a wine tasting event with hidden information.

Senario: In-class wine tasting is a formal tasting event, participating users participate by signing up for events. 

Interaction: The attendees use their own tablet to log in the system. Then view the event and choose the wine they are going to evaluate. 

2. Background and Market Research

In order to understand the business activities and processes, I conducted field trip and related research.

Fly-on-the-Wall Observation

We went to a local liquor and wine store to have a fly-on-wall observation and investigation about the wine tasting event. With the questions listed below:

1. What does the wine tasting event looks like?
2. What is the interaction between the staff and the wine tasters.
3. How long does each tasting last?
4. Which kind of questions the tasters will ask the staffs?
5. How does the staffs record the tasters' feeling for each wine taste?

Summary

1. Four wine tasting area, each area has one staff, providing 3-4 different wines for customer to taste.
2. This is an informal event, people do not need to sign up for the event, they just come to the store and stop in front of the tasting table, there are 20-30 customers in the store.
3. Customers walk around in the store and stop by the tasting counter for 5-10 minutes.
4. Customers will have a short conversation with the staff to ask some questions about the wine, like which grapes was the wine made from, where was the wine from and when did it made.
5. The customers said he knows a lot about the wine, he has his own preference on the location and the ingredient.
6. The staff will write the report at the end of each day about the customers' feedback about the wine.
7. The staff will talk the customers about the basic information about the wine. They can also help you find the wine you might like.
8. The staff did not write down the note, and they also do not use any devices in the whole processes.
9. The store provides a iPad at the service counter to help users search all of the wines in the store.

Research for Wine Evaluation Sheet

The study of wine tasting evaluation table is an important part of learning wine tasting knowledge. Through the study of the evaluation table of different wineries or websites, I got some commonly used evaluation indexes, so as to design the page and process of wine tasting evaluation

Competitive Analysis

I researched some of the wine tasting and wine shopping apps to find gaps within the current market. 

3. Discover

Interview with Total Wine & More

In order to understand the business objectives of TotalWine™️, I conducted in-depth interview with the TotalWine. I make a detailed questionnaire, which contains their business goals, and the customers' behavior they observed in real business.

Interview with Customer

I also conducted a face-to-face tasting test with real users and asked them to record their impressions to gain a better understanding of the user's psychology during the wine tasting event and their behavior patterns. Then I analyze all of the information I collected and get some insights.

I group the information about the wine in three different groups, the basic information, basic tasting evaluation index and advanced tasting feeling. I let the tester list the items, which they care more about, in each sticky note, next step is letting them drink the wine and write down their personal subjective evaluation on the note.

4. Define

Persona

Empathy Map

Conclusion

1. Lot of people think sweetness is one of the most important point to consider. Asking for the sweetness of the wine can help them decide which wine they want to drink.
2. Some people need to know the origin of the wine, for the experts, they have their own preference for the wine origin.
3. Most of the users may browse the store to find the wines. Help the customers find more similar wine they might like.
4. People cares about the classification of the wine, gave them the clear classification tag about the wine.
5. If the alcohol is too high, give them warning about the alcohol levels.
6. Region is one of the most important information that the customers will looking for.

Sketch

5. Design

Based on the research I did, I design two diferent user flows to achive the goal of TotalWine & More, The first User Flow is designed for In-store informal wine tasting event. The second User Flow is designed for In-class formal wine tasting event. 

User Flow 1 - In-Store informal wine tasting event

During a In-store wine tasting event, the tasters are random users, they just walk in the store and taste the wine they are interesed in. In this activity, the stuff request the users to take part in the evaluation and give them discount coupons in return. All the interaction is done on a tablet for work. 

User Flow 2 - In-class formal wine tasting event

During an in-class wine tasting event, all taster are identified. They will spend 45 minutes or more to learn how to evaluate a wine with a lot of companions together. In this activity, each attendees need to finish all of their work in their own device. 

Visual Design

I made all of the UI components from scratch and then use in Sensory.

Thanks for your scrolling!!!

Design by Jie Zhang

Email: jz2360@g.rit.edu

Website: jz2360.cad.rit.edu/wordpress