CLIENT

Constellation Brands Inc (CBI) is a Fortune 500 company that internationally produce iconic brands of wine, spirits, and beer such as Corona, Modelo, SVEDKA, Ruffino, and more.

THE GOAL & CHALLENGE

They currently have an internal app based off of the Sales team for employees to support their accounts, enjoy CBI products, and act as brand ambassadors. They wanted us to re-design the Ambassador app to be able to

• Incentivize all CBI employees to become evangelists through increased engagement with CBI products.

• Eventually offer the app to the general public to increase their overall engagement, interest and knowledge of CBI products.

THE APPROACH

RESEARCH

STAKEHOLDERS/SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS (SME)

After reading the brief, we had a kick-off meeting with our client, Constellation Brands. The most important outcome of the meeting was to understand what our client wanted and to align research goals before moving forward. Throughout, it was clear that employees act as a bridge between Constellation users and products. So what would be the best possible way to motivate employers to become this supportive bridge?

Through our domain research, we were able to confirm the fact that the vast majority of consumers distrust company advertising, but trust families’ and friends’ opinions. Additionally, Constellation Brands has many different apps and websites such as Chatter, Constellation University, and Brand Center serving various functions that compete with many of the core features of the Ambassador app. The Ambassador app must fill voids for employees in order to be a useful tool and not simply another name in the bucket of programs that must be negotiated, but not necessarily utilized on a semi-regular basis.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
When reviewing competitor apps, we found that it was difficult to find direct competitors. That is, other alcohol beverage companies internal apps are not accessible to the public. Therefore, we looked at various apps such as CitiBike, Instagram, Untappd, GOAT, Open Table, ClassPass and Vivino for features that they do well that could potentially become features in the Ambassador.

Features are organized into three categories:

1) Filter & Discovery

2) Mapping Interface

3) Product Availability & Education.

Citibike excelled at showing how many bikes and how many bike stalls were available at a certain location based on a color change on location pins.

Instagram excelled at imagery and chatting, and other social features.

ClassPass had a very clear and well defined sign up process and very appropriate filtering for finding classes.

Vivino and Untappd had unique ways of explaining flavor profiles and product characteristics. We hope to leverage our research findings and find inspiration from well working features and formats that can improve the Ambassador app.

CURRENT AMBASSADOR APP

USER RESEARCH

Through user interviewing/testing and research, my team was able to get more information to re-design the app for CBI employees. 

The following are three key takeaways from our users. Users need a mobile that

We further interviewed users to gain more insights about the current Ambassador app and their interests.

• The current “Sales team” app has limited features, complicated navigation, and irrelevant information provided. 

• Users have a lack of knowledge about CBI and their products because they do not have a direct, easily accessible place to learn about them: both existing and upcoming. 

• Many use popular apps such as Google Maps, Yelp, Untappd, Vivino, Open Table, and Instagram. If users were to use another app, it must at least match if not exceed the quality of existing apps.

• An incentive for users to find restaurants that sell CBI products is for company reimbursements and product allowance. 

MEET KAREN, “The CBI-Lifer”

Throughout our interviews, we sought to understand what frustrated our users when they used the current Ambassador app and what needs they have in order to use it. My team affinity mapped to extract common problems that our users had and created a persona that most accurately portrayed current CBI employees.

KAREN’S WISHES

• To learn about CBI products and the flavor profiles of different alcohols to match with her meals

• To be able to know which venues have which brands/products in order to find bars and restaurants based on the event

• To share CBI products with close friends and new acquaintances while fully taking advantage of her product allowance

We created a journey map to empathize with Karen who struggles with the existing Ambassador app. This shows Karen’s high and low points while she plans a long weekend trip to San Diego with her husband beforehand.

DEFINING THE PROBLEM

OBJECTIVES

We want to understand users’ sense of ownership and connection to CBI, and more specifically:

1. Determine how social advice and recommendations affect the users’ decision making and activity planning. 

2. Understand what users’ values are and their connection to CBI or their brands. 

3. Understand how users interact with Ambassador.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Then we were able to identify the problem that aligns with the user needs and Constellation Brands goal:

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Then we identified key design principles:   

IDEATION

With this in mind, we pinpointed three key features that address user needs in different ways. For each, we conducted user testing by comparing existing applications and low-fidelity wireframes by taking the best of existing apps and commonly used features/layouts. For the all of the low-fidelity wireframes, click here.

TAKEAWAY

Once we gathered feedback from our users and understood what things worked and why, we iterated on our designs and quickly built a final version of our prototype to retest with users. Taking their feedback into account, we built out the stand-alone city guides, making them centered around the main global CBI offices.

We also gained a lot of feedback on how users filtered both the locations they visit and the bottles they purchase and built our filters based on that criteria.

And finally we kept the blog style homepage but made it more CBI specific, focused around product launches, around CBI product launches, CBI city guides, cocktails featuring CBI products and learning about CBI labels. Below is the updated journey map of what Karen would feel after she uses the updated, improved Ambassador app.

Site map

We created a site map to clearly show which screens go where and to be able to ensure that screens are interconnected in an organized way.

FINAL DESIGN

Wireframe kit

prototype

With our research findings we created a full clickable hi-fidelity prototype.

For the Axure version, click here.

We received very positive feedback from our users, who voiced their enthusiasm for an app like our prototype. In terms of overall satisfaction, users’ average rating was 4.5 out of 5. Individual task satisfaction rated between 4.5 - 5 out of 5. Time to complete tasks was very fast, usually under ten seconds. We gained some key insights from our usability test:

• Filtering & Discovery

  • Users appreciated information hierarchy on product pages. Price, ratings, pairings, tasting profile matched with graphics or icons, while detailed information was organized on tabs.

  • Users felt there could be more filtering with respect to product, location activity, and ambiance.

  • Users liked having the city guides, cocktail recipes and learning sections as ways to gain relevant knowledge in a way that wasn’t simply searching a map. It was more engaging and similar to other social media apps they use.

• Mapping Interface

  • Users appreciated the Find Me button on products that led directly to the map.

  • When searching for restaurants, they liked that ambiguity about whether restaurants carried CBI products was eliminated.

• Product Education

  • Users liked the product pages overall. They especially liked the how the product pages were linked to many other pages and map. Users felt appropriate information was listed on the page, and they liked that dense blocks of text was organized on tabs.

  • Pairings, ratings, expert and user reviews, flavor profiles, and a You May Also Like carousel were all appreciated.

NEXT STEPS

RECOMMENDATIONS

In our project journey, we narrowed down and identified the main goals to become better, more effective brand ambassadors by expanding employee’s knowledge about CBI products or to be able to locate and share CBI brands with others. To further improve what we have worked on, we gave some recommendations for next steps: 

• MAIN SEARCH BAR & FILTERS

  The main search bar that would be available across all screens need to be built out with basic product/location filters, too.

• GEAR UP FOR UI

  UI needs to be added - color, style, graphics, visualizations, etc.

• EXTERNAL FACING APP

  As of now, the app is still catered towards CBI employees. However, the clients voiced that they would eventually like to have the app available outside of CBI and the transition for that would need to undergo another UX design process.