INDUSTRY:
UI/UX DESIGN
CLIENT:
DESIGN INTERACTIVE
YEAR:
2025
Jolt
Creating a social learning platform for aspiring coffee home brewers
about.
Jolt is a community-powered platform, helping brewers learn and grow in their coffee brewing skills through shared advice & experiences. My team had 8 weeks from October to November to complete this project for Design Interactive’s 2025 Fall Cohort.
My team was given the following prompt:
Aspiring home coffee brewers are looking to improve their skills, but learning how to make the perfect cup can be overwhelming, inconsistent, and isolating. While the process can be meditative, there is no clear path to develop mastery, receive feedback to diagnose mistakes, or gain a supportive community to share their hobby with. As a result, many brewers are discouraged to start, rely on trial-and-error, or plateau in their progress. How might we support aspiring home brewers to grow their skills and fall in love with making a great cup of coffee?
My team was tasked to design an app that would support brewers in their coffee brewing journey and help them ultimately grow as brewers.
After conducting research and talking to brewers about their needs, we found people wanted to learn from others. As a result, we designed Jolt to be community oriented with features to share and connect with people, as well as generative feedback to improve their brewing skills. By combining community support with AI-powered recommendations, Jolt gives every user a clear, supportive path to becoming a better brewer.
research.
Our team conducted research by creating surveys and interviewing brewers to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. We aimed to fully understand the needs, wants, and struggles of brewers, while also exploring key questions such as how they learn, how to differentiate those who are motivated to improve their skills from those who make coffee out of necessity, and what drives their engagement with brewing.
SURVEYS
We conducted a survey with our school community, fellow coffee enthusiasts, and online coffee forums, gathering 33 responses. Some key findings we gathered were:
USER INTERVIEWS
Our team also met with 10 coffee brewers to learn more about their needs and frustrations. Some key findings from our research showed that most people learned to brew through family, friends, or social media, but many often feel stuck and want clear, actionable guidance to improve. Coffee brewing is also a science that requires trial and error and careful tracking, which often causes people to hit a plateau because they are not sure what to adjust in their process.
We were starting to see a pattern: people wanted to improve their brew knowledge through people in their community.
KEY DEMOGRAPHICS
From our research, we found that people who are just beginning their home brewing journey and are still figuring out their process tend to be more eager to learn and improve. Many in this group are around 18-30 years old. They would benefit most from an app that helps them experiment, develop their skills, and refine their coffee brewing at home. They also showed strong interest in a tool specifically designed to support their brewing journey.
ideation.
The insights from our research helped lay the foundation for us to start building our app. With so many ideas in mind, we moved on to some brainstorming activities to help us narrow them down.
FEATURE BRAINSTORM + MATRIX
Each of our team members jotted down our initial ideas for potential features. We then organized all of our ideas into feature matrices to see which ones were the most feasible.
From this, we determined that our top features included:
Home - A place to view the main feed and discover new posts
Learn - Tutorials and other ways to learn and grow skills
Posts - For users to share their brews and interact with others
Saved - A library for users to save their favorite posts
Community - Groups for users to join, share, and learn from each other.
mid-fi prototyping.
In the lo-fi phase, the wide range of feature ideas made it difficult to define the app’s core values and determine what to prioritize. Through research, we realized users were most motivated by learning through community rather than technical tools. This insight guided the transition from paper sketches to digital wireframes and led to a more focused, community-centered experience, including the creation of circles for discussion, feedback, and sharing brews.
In our mid-fi phase, we continued iterating on different areas of the app. We experimented with displaying the posts people make in the circles to accommodate both image-based posts and text-only question posts. We also refined the growth/insights, focusing on making insights more actionable and supportive of skill development.
usability testing.
We conducted two rounds of usability testing. The first round with five participants and the second round with four participants.
Usability testing provided key takeaways that drove significant changes in our prototype, ensuring alignment with user needs:
To maintain high-value content, we implemented a model for crowdsourced technical advice/feedback, similar to successful platforms like Reddit.
We initially incorporated features like counts and post performance analytics. However, recognizing that these encourage users to focus on becoming influencers rather than authentic learning, we deliberately decided to move away from those features in the final prototype.
design system.
The design system was designed around the expectations and preferences of our core audience: young adults (18-30) who value a clean and intuitive application experience.
TYPOGRAPHY + HIERARCHY
Font Selection - DM Sans was selected as the typeface for the entire application. Its friendly feel and excellent readability were key factors. Additionally, its wide range of weights provided the necessary flexibility for establishing clear headings and arranging the visual hierarchy of all displayed text.
Consistency - To maintain uniformity, we incorporated text styles in Figma. This ensured that all forms of text, including headings, subheadings, body text, and labels, were visually consistent across the entire application.
COLOR + CONTRAST
Color Palette - To reflect the app's established "coffee roots," we chose a color palette centered on a dark brown. This specific shade was selected because it is both warm and offers high contrast, contributing to a welcoming aesthetic.
Call-to-Action (CTA) Focus - The dark brown color was strategically utilized for buttons and icons. This created strong, high-contrast CTAs, ensuring the interface felt both cohesive and highly usable.
CONSISTENCY + LAYOUT
Spacing and Layout Rules - To guarantee visual consistency across every screen, we implemented strict rules for spacing and layout:
Rule of 4’s - We followed the rule of 4’s when determining padding and spacing measurements throughout the design system.
Consistent Margins - The margins of every page were standardized and kept the same to provide a predictable and balanced visual experience.
challenges.
Prioritizing Features & Defining Scope
The initial wide range of feature ideas made it difficult to define the app's core values, and we struggled to determine what functionalities to keep and focus on.
We overcame this by relying heavily on usability testing and the survey finding (73% of users preferring community). This data-driven approach allowed us to cut technical features (like post performance analytics) and focus solely on the social and crowdsourcing components.
Time Constraints
The 8-week timeline, on top of class and schoolwork, created significant pressure to deliver a high-quality prototype on schedule.
We implemented strict time-boxing for each project phase (research, wireframing, lo-fi, mid-fi, hi-fi). This streamlined approach ensured consistency and allowed us to move quickly from concept to a refined, testable prototype within the tight deadline.
next steps.
Based on presentation day feedback and internal assessment, the next steps for the Jolt prototype are categorized into three phases, prioritizing immediate impact and long-term sustainability.
FEATURE ADDITIONS
The priority is to make the app immediately more useful and engaging. This includes adding a café map so users can easily find nearby spots, and implementing stronger community tools such as post sharing and direct messaging. These additions are essential for boosting user engagement and solidifying Jolt's community-oriented identity.
TESTING & REFINING
Before scaling, rigorous testing is required. The next step involves conducting dedicated usability tests to refine the existing flows and checking for accessibility issues. This ensures that the app is comfortable, intuitive, and usable for the broadest possible audience.
IMPLEMENTATION & BUSINESS MOVES
Once the features and usability are validated, the focus shifts to sustainability. This phase involves exploring partnerships with local cafés and mapping out long-term growth by investigating revenue options (like ads or sponsorships). The ultimate goal is transforming Jolt into a reliable, indispensable tool.
reflection.
This project was an enormous growth opportunity for me as a designer. I was introduced to not only new technical skills, but also gained firsthand experience working closely with a team of designers. As someone who has solely worked on class projects up to this point, this was my first exposure to a UI/UX process that closely reflected industry realities. I am immensely proud of my team for all of our hard work on this project, which won Best Overall from Design Interactive's Industry Judge panel!
