Getting to Know T4 Milpitas
T4 Milpitas is a local branch of the boba shop chain, T4. They provide a wide range of refreshing drinks and delicious snacks that can be enjoyed by everyone. However, they noticed that their website does not compare to other boba shops in the area. Although they have great branding, food and service, their website falls short of showing this to new potential customers. After listening to their experiences, one question came to mind: What can we do to create a seamless website experience while promoting the many amazing drinks and snacks T4 Milpitas has to offer?
Target Demographic
Avid Boba Drinker
The Avid Boba Drinker are first drawn to large media presence and visual appealing branding. Some of their needs are knowing what’s most popular on the menu, drink customization. and ability to read customer reviews. Their goals include finding an aesthetic place for social gatherings, trying specialties on the menu, and going to highly rated spots. Some of the frustrations they face are no drink descriptions, and no quality representation.
Family Oriented Customer
The Family Oriented Customer focuses a lot on cost and variety. They tend to be ordering for many family members including children, so they need a menu with many options. Their goals include finding family friendly locations with high diversity menus, and making economical choices when going out. Some frustrations they face are difficult ordering systems for large orders, and low diversity menus.
9-5 Worker
The 9-5 Workers cares most about location and efficiency. They tend to have a regular order, and want something quick and easy. They like to utilize online ordering, and their goal is to grab quick treat on the go after a long day at work or during their lunch break. They feel most frustrated when they can’t quickly find the drink/food they had in mind or long waits for their order.
What customers had to say about T4 Milpitas’ website
5/10 people thought the website negatively influenced their decision to potentially visit this location or thought it was lacking in some way
4/10 people use websites, social media or other online resources to look for new potential boba places to visit
Competitive Analysis
Boba shops tend to have very unique and aesthetic design and branding. They often have cute mascots, colorful styles, tea puns in the name, etc. One thing that really makes a boba shop stand out is there social media presence.
For our wireframe, we added a like feature to show popularity of drinks for new customers. To increase social media presence, we added T4 Milpitas' instagram page and post previews. Drink description overlays were added so customers know what is in drinks they are unfamiliar with.
When using our wireframe, boba lovers and our client thought the drink liking system was an interesting idea, but they would much prefer a favoriting option for future visits.
Final Moodboard
HiFi Prototype
Based on user testing and comments from our client, we created our Hifi prototype. We added a like feature to show popularity of drinks for new customers. To increase social media presence, we added T4 Milpitas' instagram page and post previews. Drink description overlays were added so customers know what is in drinks they are unfamiliar with.
T4 Milpitas and customers loved that drink photos were the main component of the menu. Most customers look at the photos in their decision making processes, so this showcased the drinks clearly and aesthetically.
Lessons Learned
Our biggest challenge was organization because the T4 menu was so vast. It was also difficult to create a fully functioning prototype that had all the components we set out to include, and prototyping the interactions ended up becoming a bit unorganized. I believe understanding and knowing how to properly use your design tools helps reduce the amount of work you have to do, and keep your work efficient. So, I plan to learn more about Figma and other design tools in the future to help maximize the work I do.
I believe there are still many things we could improve about this design and more testing we could do to help make the user experience more seamless. For example, I think there would be issues with some of the overlays when it comes to mobile vs desktop versions of this design. However, I think the research and time put in to understand T4 Milpitas as people was the highlight of this experience.