Starbucks
The project: Site Reinvention
My role: User Experience Director
The ask was to create a website that was years ahead of any other competitor while still driving to stores, incorporating their ecommerce experience and encouraging more loyalty:
For the UX team, it began with a mad-dash to create interesting site concepts to only have the client pushing to see more out-there explorations
On top of leading the UX team, I also co-lead the strategy, research and design teams
Starbucks enjoyed working with us so much they invited us back to work on another ‘secret’ product-design project a year later
Feature: Sketching oodles of doodles
Co-collaborating with Starbucks, we created several unique approaches to content and navigation.
Feature: A unique navigation model
The chosen model allowed users to navigate traditionally through a site, but also added the ability to navigate horizontally across sections. This construct was the key concept of the site from which all decisions were made – we called it the “Stacker”.
Feature: Building a detailed modular system
We employed a modular system to ensure the system could grow and fit together – starting with the smallest elements and working all the way up through individual cards, stacks of cards, collections of stacks, and finally full pages of content.
Feature: Combining sales & marketing
The existing Starbucks website was siloed. A lot of effort was put into understanding the ecommerce platform and how to streamline product sales while integrating customer rewards and brand initiatives.
Feature: Creating a new store finder
Designing a unique store finder meant that we needed to come up with a solution that worked across a variety of use cases. It had to work quickly and effectively for most customers, while those looking for a little bit more we treated the individual store pages as destinations.
Feature: Designing with purpose
One of the many interesting (but not surprising) things about working closely with Starbucks is how very particular they are about their brand. We showcased how every decision mapped back to established aspects of our mutual vision – creating playful messages, localization elements like weather and offering a reward based on the time of day.