The Challenge
How can we come up with a proposal for expanding the Equal Exchange coffee product line?
The Client
- For-profit Fairtrade worker-owned cooperative.
- Products: organic, gourmet coffee, tea, sugar, bananas, avocados, cocoa, and chocolate bars.
- Producers: farmer cooperatives in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
My Role
UX Researcher & Designer
Timeline
4 weeks
Team
Openclassrooms Design Mentor
Goals
- Conduct qualitative research on how people drink coffee (Central Europe).
- Confirm a business intuition about how to expand the product line.
- Conduct market research to confirm which new product to launch and provide the next steps and recommendations.
Deliverables
- Proposal for product line expansion.
- Personas.
- User Journey Map.
- Competitive analysis.
- Next Steps & Recommendations.
Discovery Phase 1
Understanding The Context To Formulate Hypothesis
I first explored Equal Exchange website to better know the client and to analyse its product offerings. While navigating through it I noticed that they were not offering single-serve cups for one of the most used coffee machines in Europe.
Hypothesis to confirm
“Define if a single-serve cup of Equal Exchange should be compatible with one of the most used coffee machines.”
Empathize
Qualitative User Research
I created a research plan and established who I would have interviewed and the questions I would have asked to:
- understand how and when people drink coffee at home
- determine their consciousness about fair trade
- understand if they could change one type of coffee for another
- understand what is the most used coffee machine
- understand where and when they buy coffee
Ethnographic Interviews
After elaborating on a questionnaire I conducted ethnographic interviews: three in a coffee shop and three at participant’s homes.
Personas
Once I had collected and categorised answers, I created three personas to:
• represent different types of users
• understand users’ needs & goals
• determine the most profitable user profile
Journey Map
At this point, I could use the main persona to create a journey map representing the user on his way to buy coffee at the supermarket.
Discovery Phase 2
Competitive analysis
Besides user research, I also ran a competitive analysis on a direct, a secondary, and an indirect competitor (Nespresso, Starbucks, and Pukka) to understand how they were positioned regarding the same product (direct & secondary competitors) and within the market.
Define
Identifying Key Findings
I used an affinity diagram to collect data and to organise them into four groups and categories (coffee features; journey map insights; making coffee at home; competitors do). This helped me to better visualise and choose the most relevant findings.
User Research
1
Users drink different kinds of coffee at home (pre-ground, whole bean, and single-use pods).
2
Users use different kinds of machines to make coffee. _______________________________________________________
3
Users prefer to buy a new product of the same brand they already know.
————————-
Product Research
4
Competitors have associated and launched adaptable coffee pods.
5
Competitors are operating worldwide.
6
Competitors analysed are Fair Trade supporters.
Finally I proposed the next steps & recommendations before passing to the ideation and the prototyping phases.
__Next Steps & Recommendations_ _
1. Determine if Equal Exchange aims to sell worldwide (?).
2. Conduct user research focusing on coffee pod users to thoroughly validate problem hypotheses.
3. Perform product research utilizing a Comparison Matrix to analyze competitors’ adaptable pods.
3.1 Determine the essential features the product must share with competitors.
4. Prototype coffee pods: integrate user and product research findings to ascertain the essential features the product must possess.
5. Explore potential partnerships with companies that share similar values and produce adaptable pods.
6. Prioritize branding efforts for ground coffee ahead of piloting adaptable pods.
7. Pilot: produce a small number of adaptable coffee pods and test them with actual users.
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