Starbucks
Kiosk (Wireframes) | 2014
How do people order and pay for a drink at Starbucks?
Overview
2 Starbucks stores, 2 days, 1 green tea latte, and a sleepless night.
I took on this 2-day challenge for a UX design position that I was applying for right after graduating from college in 2014. This project got me a flight ticket to the Silicon Valley for the job interview. However, I didn’t get the job in the end. On the bright side, at least I’ve learned how to design for a new product from scratch (and how to order a drink at Starbucks)!
The Challenge
Starbucks wants to cut down on long lines by introducing a self-serve kiosk that lets customers order and pay for a drink on their own. Create a design that focuses on simplicity, speed, and a seamless experience.
Time Limit: 2 days
Process
Given only two days to complete the challenge, I decided to keep the scope down to delivering a proposal including user journey, user flow, information architecture, wireframes, and a grand vision for how the application could evolve to be smarter and more personalized as if this was a real product I’d be building.
User Research
I conducted field studies and user interviews to understand how customers order and pay for a drink at Starbucks. Understanding the unique language and culture at Starbucks has helped set the foundation of this application from the start of the project.
User Interview
I interviewed 10 customers right after they made their purchases by asking them a simple question: “What did you just order?”. Don’t underestimate this question because it reveals a lot of insights into how people order their drinks at Starbucks. For example, it tells you:
How do people describe their orders?
What customization do people do to their drinks?
In what order do people specify the customization?
One very interesting finding I came across was that one of the customers simply ordered water. This wasn’t on the menu, but people do ask for it. This reminded me that this self-serve kiosk must be able to accommodate for special requests like asking for water or providing personalized instructions to cover things we wouldn’t have thought of on our own.
User Journey
User Flow
How customers order and pay for a drink using the kiosk
Wireframes
Kiosk Design
What I’ve Learned
While we take online food ordering for granted today, let’s not forget that this isn’t a thing back in 2014. Yes, there are soda vending machines and parking ticket machines. However, the concept for ordering a highly customized drink on a touch device was fairly new to the world at the time, so there weren’t many precedents out there to refer to.
“Focus on the user and all else will follow.” - Google
We all know that the business wants to sell its coffee to the customers. For Starbucks especially, what they want to sell is an experience, and a personalized one.
For the customers, they are looking for that cup of coffee that gets them ready to start their day. For Starbucks customers especially, I believe they are coming back for the consistent quality, warm greetings, human touch (you are called by your name instead of a number), and the freedom to customize their drinks.
Once I understood the business and user goals, my direction was clear. Now, the remaining work was to translate that buying experience into the digital world using the flow and language users are accustomed to in the real world. Then, I’d build, test, and iterate on the solutions again and again.
I’ve learned that solving a new problem for the users isn’t so hard after all if we simply follow the users.