Lead Designer: Boston Gordon

 Discover new bonafide craft beers and support underrepresented brewers

The Problem

The craft beer boom of the last two decades means that you can get a frosty IPA anywhere you look. Corporatization means that only some of those beers find the audience they deserve. In the United States, breweries are overwhelmingly run by white men and brewers who are BIPOC, LGBTQ, or women continue to struggle to have their craft recognized. BottomsUp seeks to highlight bonafide craft beers and marginalized brewers with a fun to use beer finder and tracker - with best-of lists highlighting the work of brewers from all walks of life.

User Research

I created a survey to make sure that the need for a craft beer finder and platform to discover marginalized brewers had a wide audience. My user’s responses demonstrated an enthusiasm for both. Overwhelmingly respondents were concerned with the origin of their beer and if the breweries were true independent craft brewers.

Even more enthusiastically, users showed an interest in supporting BIPOC, LGBTQ, and women owned breweries.

User Stories

My survey results and user needs guided me to create my prioritized stories. Users would need to: I want to look up a beer, I want to mark that I drank a beer, I want to keep track of what I thought of a beer, I want to get beer recommendations, I want to learn about the origin of the beer I'm drinking, I want to find where I can drink a certain beer, I want to create an account, I want to login, I want to see top rated beers, and I want to view my beer diary.

Prototypes and Testing

I did rough sketches of what the app would look like so I could envision how the user’s needs laid out on the screen.

Once I had my sketches I used grids to create lo-fidelity mockups that I could use to try the product out on test users. I asked users to take me through onboarding, searching for a beer, and viewing their beer diary. User’s wanted better navigation to get from each task and expressed a desire to have more options in the search functionality.

Branding

I wanted BottomsUp to have unique and fun colors to separate it from the neutral toned and hyper-masculinized world of most craft beer. A bubbly logo and neon colors including pink would harken to the app’s desire to break norms and highlight underrepresented communities. The fun and modern Josefin Sans would provide logo and header typeface while an understated serif font, Cardo, would provide paragraph text.

Hi-fi Prototype and Testing

I applied my unique, vocal, and interactive branding to my mockups and created my prototype. I tested the prototype on three users again. Each user was asked to walk through looking at LGBTQ owned breweries, searching for an IPA, and doing a Craftcheck. Users understood how to navigate the app without much difficulty. They did vocalize wanting for flexibility for search options and wanted to see more of the app in action.

Conclusion

BottomsUp is ready to change the way people discover new beers. With more time and attention and a more robust prototype the app could represent a huge missing part of the craft beer hobby market.