Adega
Discover, organize, and share the wines you love with the world.
Adega is a personal project. My goal was to create a mobile app to exercise my skills as a product designer, especially information architecture, interaction design, and visual design.
How could I structure a design process to create an app for wine lovers and enhance my skills as a product designer?
To conceive the product, I followed a three-step process: research (exploration and definition), prototype (ideation and simulation), and evaluation (test and iterate).
I used different techniques to investigate the problem space, such as benchmarking, user research, and persona. Based on all the insights collected at this phase, I defined the user needs and product objectives.
The first technique I used to explore the market space was benchmarking. I analyzed three apps (Wine, Vivino, and Evino) to compare their pros and cons.
After the comparison, three insights came to mind:
Before sketching any idea, I needed to understand users' preferences about wine. To do so, I ran a survey with 20 questions to gather data about demographics, habits, and preferences. The form was available on my LinkedIn profile for a week and received 30 qualified answers. The main results are as follows.
When asked about the main factor they consider when choosing a wine label:
And when asked about what features they consider the most relevant, the 3 out of 7 most voted were:
After gathering all the data about the market and the users, I created a persona to consolidate the main findings and insights. The attributes I considered were some demographics such as gender and age, the goals, behaviors, frustrations, and motivations.
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With the problem space explored, I started the second stage of the process, which goal was to address the solution space. I used different tools at this phase: user flow, wireframes, and high-fidelity prototype.
The first step was defining the functional specifications and the content requirements. After this, I created the user flow to consider the interaction design and information architecture.
The next step was creating the wireframes. This stage was essential for three reasons: to present the information in a way that facilitates understanding; to arrange the interface elements and enable users to interact with the system; and to structure the navigation, allowing them to move through the experience.
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The final step of the prototyping phase was defining the sensory experience. It included different visual elements, such as color palettes, typography, design comps, and a style guide.
With the wireframes and visual elements created, it was possible to design the screens in high-fidelity. This process was much easier because the rules and principles were predefined. So the main effort was translating and adjusting each screen accordingly.
