Breville

The promise of “cafe quality” coffee at home

There are a large number of espresso machines on the market that claim to produce “cafe quality coffee at home”.  Most fall short, delivering bland espresso with flat foam.  Breville machines sit proudly above the “Cafe Quality” threshold line, and can guarantee results that compete with professional machines found in the world’s best coffee shops.

These results are possible for any Breville user, so long as two very important criteria are met: 

1. The Breville machine must be dialed-in properly

2. The coffee beans must be fresh

Coffee, like fruit, has a limited shelf life

As coffee consumers, we’ve been trained to look at a the expiration date, rather than the roast date. While most stores sell coffee with expiration dates far in the future, the reality is that coffee is no longer truly fresh 2-weeks post-roast, and will be unable to produce the aroma and texture that discerning coffee aficionados crave.

Great machine + bad beans = disappointing results

Breville was plagued with an big problem: a steady influx returned machines, and complaints of coffee that didn’t meet taste expectations. After studying the data, Breville was able to determine that the root causes of dissatisfaction were improper machine setup, and stale beans.

An all-on-one solution, with multiple benefits

While usage error could be remedied through education and guidance, bad beans still served as a critical “weakest link” in the perfect coffee equation. An all-in-one solution could solve for that, while providing numerous other benefits.

1. Allow Breville to intercept the “bad beans” purchase mistake

2. Guarantee users a delicious cup of coffee

3. Provide shoppers with a lower entry price-point via machine financing

4. Allow Breville to leverage the subscription model for ongoing loyalty and up-sell and cross-sell opportunities

The “all-in-one” coffee solution concept

The concept was simple: a perfectly packaged solution that included an easily-affordable machine, essential accessories, fresh beans, and educational content to ensure proper usage and results.

Affordable Machine + Fresh Beans + Essential Accessories + Guiding Content

The North Star Goal:

Create a comprehensive “Coffee Solution” that accelerates machine sales, guides customers through a great “first use” experience, and helps Breville play a meaningful role in their ongoing coffee experience.

Understanding the product offerings

MACHINES and EQUIPMENT: Breville makes espresso and drip coffee machines ranging from $250 to $2500, plus a slew of accessories. We studied the features and capabilities, and looked at metrics on popular purchase combinations, to understand how to package the offerings into meaningful solution bundles.

COFFEE ROASTERS: Around the same time as this Coffee Solution project, Breville launched its own coffee marketplace, Beanz.com. These roasters partnerships were a huge advantage, allowing us to seamlessly incorporate coffee subscriptions into our final design solution.

Understanding the customer.

We knew that our design solution had to flexible enough to meet the needs of a wide variety of coffee customers, from noobs to experts, each with specific motivations, needs, and preferences.

After identifying those customers, we built out their Customer Profiles. Similar to personas, these profiles articulated different levels of coffee knowledge, taste sophistication, shopping entry point, and other special considerations, based on historical customer data, industry data, and anecdotal evidence from Breville..

If we build it, will they come?

We had a gut feeling that this solution concept was a winner, but to truly validate our assumptions, we tested the idea with real customers and prospects to gauge understanding, need, and interest. Not surprisingly, most of those surveyed expressed a high degree of interest in an all-in-one coffee solution.

Concept Sketching

Our project kicked-off mid-pandemic, so in place of traditional in-person whiteboard sketching, we created “virtual white-board” space within our shared FIGMA file. Using a “diverge then converge” approach, designers (including myself) would ideate on their own, and then come together to share, refine, and often merge design ideas. 

These blue-sky concept sketches served as the basis for our wireframes once the formal design sprints started.

Solution Flows

Before we designed the interface intricacies of each screen, we took a moment to zoom-out, and map out screen flow in three distinct swim-lanes, ensuring that we were accounting for the three critical purchase paths: 

Solution Explorer - open to the idea of a solution package

Solution Shopper - actively looking for a solution package

Machine minded - just looking for a machine (but may be convinced)

We refined multiple iterations of this journey map. With each round, we gained a better understanding of how these paths often overlapped and intertwined, and how we could eliminate friction at pivotal moments within the journey.

Wireframes

Using our previous concept sketches as a starting point, we added fidelity and detail to build detailed wireframes for every screen and interaction in the end-to-end experience, from top-of-funnel marketing to post-purchase support.

End-to-end shop flows supported up-front marketing communication, requisite commerce browsing and product pages, package configuration, and a augmented checkout that didn’t disrupt existing functionality.

Post Purchase Flows that supported unboxing, machine registration and setup, first use, and troubleshooting.

Testing Designs

We conduct qualitative research to validate user acceptance of our solution strategy & design interactions. With help from a KNow Research, our testing agency partner, we observed participants interact with a high-fidelity prototype to determine the usability of the Breville “Solution Bundle” experience, and its appeal to potential consumers.

Research Questions touched upon topics such as: appeal of subscription bundle idea, clarity of information presented, ease of navigation, and how a 2-chapter checkout may impact likelihood to complete checkout

Participants were sourced from US and UK, from a variety of income levels and demographics

Key Takeaways summarized our high-level findings

Detailed Feedback was used to guide our design decisions when refining designs in latter sprints.

Delivery of Final Product

The culmination of months of intense strategizing, planning, designing, and testing, the final designs for the Breville Coffee Solution experience were ready to go live. Using a phased approach, the commerce flow was shipped first, with the Post-Purchase experience slated for a fast-follow.

Impact summary