What's the big idea? ☕️

While working at Starbucks in 2018, the product design team had many creative ideas to bring engagement to the Starbucks app. One idea was to help users understand when their order was ready for pickup while dropping small snippets on the coffee-making process. The end result looks a lot like what Uber eats has accomplished a year or so later with the food prep animation.

Now I look at this old idea and can see it come to life with more approachable tools like lottie animation which may have solved our storage and loading issues at the time. Here was some initial thinking.

1. Introduce an order timeline for more clarity on users next steps.

The current experience alerts users to prep for driving to pick up the order in an estimated time frame which hits the UX benchmark but feels more to be desired.

2. Bring coffee culture to the app.

Starbucks has always prided itself on creating a third-place where coffee is romanized and celebrated. In 2020, we see the world changing and this third place is no longer available. With this in mind, Starbucks can consider bringing the romanticism of coffee to the app. Offering in-house tutorials, coffee equipment, and enhanced ordering experience. In relation to the animation, while the concepts illustrate a pour-over, this can easily apply to latte, cold brew, and Frappuccino.