Infinitea
— PROJECT NAME
Infinitea
— ROLE
UI Designer
— DATE
April 2023
The goal of this app is to give users a tool for virtually keeping track of their tea collection. I was inspired to create this app based on a problem that many of my tea-drinking friends have experienced – the ever-growing tea collection and how to keep track of it all.
The target audience is casual tea drinkers who want to catalog their collection for quick reference when deciding what tea to have or while they’re out tea shopping. The app also aims to bring tea drinkers together to share their libraries and love of tea.
I also wanted to challenge myself for this project and design something I haven’t before. So, I designed a smartwatch companion app for Infinitea.
User Personas
User 1 – Oscar
Oscar is new to his city and wants to expand his tea tastes, but he feels overwhelmed in his search for tea because there are so many options. He wants an easy way to keep track of what he has while also making connections.
User 2 – Audrey
Audrey is a working professional who is passionate about sharing her tea experiences with other people. She hasn’t found an app that allows her to do that quite yet while also keeping her tea-tracking casual.
Big Picture Storyboard
To create more empathy, specifically with Oscar, I created a big picture storyboard that shows his experience of buying tea. He can’t always remember the names of his teas or what’s in his cupboard. Sometimes this results in him rebuying teas he doesn’t actually enjoy.
Tea Industry Research
After creating my user personas and exploring their user journeys, I took what I learned into research about the tea industry, which is expected to grow over the next year with new flavours being offered. This means having a tea app with good user experience could be beneficial to tea-drinkers.
Research into the tea industry shows that it’s expected to grow over the next year and offer more flavours.
Current Tea App Research
When I looked into what’s currently available in terms of mobile apps for tea, I didn’t find a lot. While there were a few options, only two stood out in terms of user experience and user interface, My Tea Pal and Steeped.
My research into these two apps showed that there were some gaps to fill and issues to address, such as creating something easier to use and more for casual tea drinkers who just like to pop a teabag in a mug and go.
User Flows
Before designing any of the mobile or smartwatch app screens, I created user flows for both apps, focusing on the flow of choosing a tea to brew.
Mobile App Flow
In the mobile flow, users can view their profile, brew a tea, or add a tea from the home screen. They can also get recommendations. After adding a tea, users can brew it or return to the home screen.
Smartwatch Flow
If a user is using the smartwatch app, they can view teas from their library, choose a tea to brew or have the app randomly select a tea for them. It’s not possible to add a tea in the smartwatch flow.
Digital Wireframes
I used Balsamiq to create my digital wireframes for the mobile app. I wanted the experience of working with a different program than Adobe XD or Figma, just to see what options I have as a UX designer. I also used Balsamiq to create wireframes for a smartwatch app to go with the mobile app.
Design System
Since the focus for Infinitea was UI design, I created a short design guide to use as I designed my high-fidelity mockups. This guide includes my main colours, typography, icons, graphics, and components I used for this app. The graphics and backgrounds were all created using Canva.
Component & Design Style Sheet for Infinitea
High-Fidelity Mockups
The high-fidelity mockups for Infinitea feature light colours, which can often be associated with tea. The goal was to create a design with neutral earth tones. The smartwatch app has more saturated colours to help with contrast as the screen is much smaller.
A selection of high-fidelity mockups for the mobile and smartwatch apps
Going Forward
Testing – While the focus for this project was to create something visually appealing, it hasn't been tested as of yet for it's usability or accessibility. As a next step for this project, I plan to prototype the app and get feedback from the target audience on what's working for them and where things need improvement.
More Features – Another feature that many tea drinkers may find useful is the ability to select which brewing method they're using for their cup of tea. This feature was left out of the initial design because many of the potential users I spoke to during research mentioned they just put the tea bag in their mug and don't use any particular brewing method.
Leveraging AI – Some preliminary research with the static mockups has suggested that users might appreciate the ability to take photo of their tea – whether it comes in a box from the grocery store or a bag from a tea shop, and have AI fill in the information fields for adding a new tea to the library.
