BUNN // VirtualTOUCH

Challenge

Quickly prototype and bring to market a contact-less solution for dispensing beverages in order to maintain a competitive offering.

My Role

Lead UX, UI design, and development of mobile web companion app to provide a touchless experience for dispensing a beverage.

Details

In a close collaboration with our equipment engineering team, my team prototyped and delivered a new, contact-less solution that made it possible to dispense a beverage using a personal cell phone. This was especially critical to innovate during a time when consumers are less likely to interact with interfaces that are frequently touched by others.

We determined that the quickest, no-fuss way for a user to begin the experience on their phone was via a QR code. I was skeptical at first to employ the user of a QR code, given their confusing nature and history, especially here in the US. However, we kept coming back to it given the contraints of the challenge to get a solution to market quickly that enabled a consumer could just walk up and begin using the new experience.

Web vs. Native

We briefly debated Our team proposed that we leverage the capabilities of native browsers to host a web application rather than develop a native app. It was extremelty important to eliminate as much friction as possible. Downloading a native app from an app store in order to dispnse a beverage added unnecessary complexity and time to the experieince, without offering much benefit.

Our team also rapidly deployed a new API infrastructure to support the new experience. We iterated through design direction directly in the browser and tested designs with some of our key partners and customers to arrive at a MVP that we could bring to market quickly.

Visual Exploration

Early on, we demonstrated some higher fidelity mockups as a way to help customers envison how the final experience could be customized for their own brand. Here's some of the visual exploration we showed.