Aillio is a coffee roasting technology company based in Taipei, with co-founders hailing from Denmark. The inception of Aillio came about with the invention of the hugely popular Bullet R1 – a small capacity roaster which uses induction heating, is the world’s most energy efficient roaster and also happens to be the smallest sized roaster for it’s roasting capacity. Aillio is disrupting the coffee roasting industry – simplifying what is a complicated, dirty, industrious process into a clean, accessible, and highly effective roasting method.

Aillio built their own desktop software (roasTime) alongside their roaster which is used to control the roaster as well as monitor the roasts progress; roasTime was built on C-Sharp and only available for Windows users. As well as being limited to windows the learning curve for users was high. The software was also localised so users details were not being captured, roasting data was not being saved in a centralized system and nothing was being properly tracked or analysed.

Over 6 months partnering with two developers I was tasked with a complete redesign and rebuild of the roasTime desktop software with goals to create a more modern, intuitive cloud based offering this time built on Electron, which would be available to Windows, Mac and Linux Users. As a hands on product lead this involved meeting with stakeholders and users to ensure their needs were always at the forefront, designing the UI/UX, running sprints, and writing all the presentational mark-up (HTML/CSS).

After a period of deep diving into the art and science of coffee roasting, becoming a competent coffee roaster / operator of the Aillio Bullet R1; the next step was to clarify user personas, shed light on how they were using the machine and test assumptions – we did this by:

  • Conducting internal interviews
  • Conducting interviews with users
  • Delving into the very active online community forum and Facebook group
  • Running a Typeform survey campaign
  • Analysing available analytics, and implementing further tracking

User Personas

Survey

Customer Journey Mapping

Original UI

Roast Profile Search Variables

The end result of this research and the analogy of the redesign was that we needed to cater towards the needs of the customer base which was made up of very technical roasters who demanded absolute control, but also to the growing subset of users who craved ease of use, automation and expected the UX standards of today’s modern web apps. roasTime needed to be intuitive, a joy to use, but also powerful without being overbearing.

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Goals

  • On boarding needed to incentivise registering an account to facilitate cloud participation for future exploration with machine learning and security of users data.
    • Users roasting whilst logged in.
    • Number of registered accounts.
  • Improve the overall roasting experience; help users roast better coffee – encourage complete adoption of the new hybrid desktop app.
    • Software adoption.
    • User roasting activity.
  • Overhaul of the roast recipe builder
    • Number of users using the roast recipe builder.
    • Number of recipes created.
  • Simplify submitting roast results post roast so the data could be synced with the RoastWorld cloud platform.

Iteration and feedback loops

After the MVP was taken live and continuous deployment was in place we closely monitored feedback and analytics to help inform our iteration on everything from user flows to control interactions.

Lean – Design System

As the previous software was built upon stock Windows components a new design system was developed over time, becoming more refined with each iteration being careful not to slow the process as we focused on UX and speed initially.

Information Hierarchy

In order to serve the users seeking deep analysis whilst at the same time serving the needs of everyday roasters careful consideration was taken to architect the hierarchy of information displayed on the roasting page. This was adjusted iteratively with each release after feedback and testing with beta users.

Roast Recipe Creator

One requested feature after we released the MVP was for the revival of functionality which was in the previous windows version of roasTime the roast recipe creator. The roast recipe builder allowed users to create a roasting formula based on time and temperature triggers. As powerful as this was in the old version many users found it very hard to use and it remained a niche feature. We set out to revolutionise this feature and started from scratch, the feedback was very positive with wide adoption taking place.

Outcome

With the help of a passionate and dedicated user base we were able to move quickly on feedback and create a well received application. There were some teething issues around users not having access to 100% of the features in the new version that were available in the previous version, this was overcome by prioritising the most requested so that all users were able to move over to the new version as soon as possible.

  • We seen a 1200% increase in users roasting whilst logged in.
  • New software adoption has been hugely successful with close to total adoption.
  • There has been an exponential increase in people roasting in general.
  • Feedback for the new recipe creator has been very positive, with thousands of roast recipes created and shared.

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@ailllio

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