Creating a Memorable, Accessible Wine Experience for the UW Family
Cherish
Time
November - December 2023
(10 weeks)
Tools
Figma
My Role
UX Designer & Researcher
(Solo Project)
✍🏻 PROBLEM STATEMENT
The University of Washington (UW) community in Seattle, known for its diverse population and love for local experiences, lacks a dedicated platform for wine enthusiasts to connect, learn, and explore their palate in an inclusive and accessible way. While Seattle boasts a rich wine culture, many events are either too expensive, exclusive, or intimidating for students and families. This creates a gap for the UW community to experience the region's wine culture in a welcoming environment that fosters both education and social connection.
PAIN POINTS
High Cost
Many wine events in Seattle are prohibitively expensive, discouraging students, families, and beginners from participating.
Exclusive Atmosphere
Traditional wine events often cater to experienced connoisseurs, making newcomers feel unwelcome or intimidated.
Limited Social Connections
Existing wine experiences often miss opportunities to foster meaningful social connections within the UW community.
🎯 Goal + HMW statement
To create an inclusive, engaging, and educational wine events at UW that reflects Seattle’s vibrant wine culture, fosters social connections within the campus community, and makes wine exploration accessible and approachable for students, families, and newcomers.
Therefore,
How might we create a welcoming environment that balances education, social engagement, and hands-on experiences to encourage wine exploration for all levels of enthusiasts?
🍷 CHERISH
To overcome these challenges, here we introduce Cherish, a wine festival tailored to the UW community with;
For wine enthusiast who wants to explore their palette experience, Cherish provides three-day long festival with unique headlines and side events.
📌 Core Value Point
For wine enthusiast who wants to explore their palette experience, Cherish provides three-day long festival with unique headlines and side events.
📌 Unique Selling Point
Unlike the other wine festivals, Cherish gives an opportunity for all UW facility to attend the festival for free, including the free events and food.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Based on the competitor analysis, I found that they do not provide affordable and some events that will deepen the customers' understanding about the wine itself.
👩💼 USER PERSONA
Knowing my competitors wouldn’t be complete without visualizing the type of customers I might encounter.
My three personas are Amy, Albert, and Ramona. Each of them has different background but they have similar needs.
Notice all of the personas I chose have one common need, which is low budget. They are also associated with University of Washington, either current students or alumni.
It is also the similar situation for Albert, where he ended up buying the tickets because it’s cheaper compared to the other events outside the campus. He is also miss his campus and wants to introduce it to his partner at the event.
🎢 CUSTOMER JOURNEY
I chose Ramona, my third persona, to develop my customer journey, because I expect most UW students will attend the festival with friends and classmates, especially since it's free for the UW family. For this journey map, Ramona will experience the festival alongside her friends.
🔃 USER FLOW
We're halfway done! After completing the research and promotion phases, what else do we need? After persuading them to join and considering that they will scan the barcode, what other components do they need? Yes, that's correct—a website to register for the festival!
Thus, I created a user flow specifically for the task of registering for the festival ticket to get a clearer picture of how smooth the user's experience and journey are during the registration process.
💡INSIGHT
Several days later, I approached 10 classmates to do a short interview regarding their interest toward my festival.
The results showed that 90% of them are interested to join the festival. Also seemed like eating pasta as a dinner also interests them the most.
⚙️ SWITCHING GEARS
Furthermore, I also decided to focus on my initial three wireframes, ensuring I was on the right track before creating more complex wireframes. I did interview the same schoolmates for the second time regarding the wireframes I made.
👩🦰
Student 1
"I like the illustrations"
👨🏻
Student 4
"I prefer to be more simple"
🧑🏾🦱
Student 2
"I am quite confused about what to press"
👱🏻♀️
Student 5
"The content is a bit hard to read"
🧑🏻🦰
Student 3
"Creative word mark"
👨🦰
Student 6
"More explanations about the festival might be needed here"
Despite that several comments were positive, but the remaining feedback led me to reflect on areas for improvement:
Focus more on simplicity rather than unnecessary details.
Implement more familiar design elements and current design practices.
📝 REVISION TIME
After evaluating design's feedback, I made several revision to my home page because based on user feedback, home page seemed to need more improvements.
In addition to updating existing elements, I had the idea to introduce a button that directs to a page detailing the Cherish festival, rather than burying it in the hamburger menu. This approach improves accessibility, allowing users to easily learn about the festival prior to registration.
🏃♀️ FINAL DESIGNS
STYLE GUIDE
🤔 WHAT'S NEXT?
I have finally finished my personal class project 🥳🥳🥳 YAAYYY!! I am grateful that my first project helped me practicing and applying UX knowledge, where I involved myself into the entire process.
Here are things I learned throughout the entire process:
This project has taught me that self-testing is valuable before seeking external feedback. It's crucial to continue empathizing myself when creating mockups, as I'm a potential user too.
I've come to appreciate and enjoy the iteration process. Moving forward, I plan to conduct more user interviews and gather additional feedback to further refine the mockups.