Hi, I’m Ryan, a User Experience Designer at Micro Focus, currently focussing on enterprise cybersecurity software.
I am a technology enthusiast with a passion for design and with over 2 years’ experience working within both User Interface & User Experience Design, I am dedicated to the forever evolving world of interaction design for current technologies and technology of the future.
As Britain and America's most popular alcoholic beverage, 2019 saw over 8 billion pints of beer sold in Britain alone. BeerBible will allow beer drinkers to discover a world outside their local pub’s beer taps. BeerBible is the world’s largest beer database available in the palm of your hand. Scan beers using your smartphone camera and dive into an augmented reality to learn more about that golden liquid. BeerBible allows you to rate, review as well as keep track of beers you have tried from all over the world.
Developing BeerBible has been a long but rewarding process involving a lot of iterative prototypes, usability testing and feedback. Firstly, with 244 pints of beer being consumed annually in the UK per capita and this estimated to gradually increase over the next ten years, I wanted to narrow down my ideal target market in order to cater the application for them as well as all other generations. I began with creating multiple user research surveys in order to use the data I collected to populate user personas and empathy maps for a range of different potential users.
I then took to looking at the potential UI of BeerBible and how I could create a beautiful, sleek UI to contain all of the applications features. I started with various quick sketches to look at layout idea’s which gradually moved to more detailed wireframes and a grey-box style, mid-fidelity prototype.
I then built a component library in Figma in order to keep all of the assets I would need to build the screens for each feature. This consisted of creating cards and tiles that would make up the majority of the UI, as well as custom imagery for each individual beer. This also played host to text styles and iconography. With all of the UI components built, I then used them to design the screens, using my grey-box mid-fidelity wireframes as a basis to follow. Once I had created all the screens for each feature, I then created multiple prototype iterations which were used to test various sections of the applications and later then all tied together to create the final prototype.
BeerBible has allowed me to showcase my skills and strengths I had gained on placement at Kraydel last year, as well as what I have learned from my start at Micro Focus in Interaction Design. It has encouraged me to improve on the weaker elements of my craft and has given me the opportunity to combine my love of ice-cold beer and design.
BeerBible is now available as a high-fidelity prototype that can be used to seek investment for development.
You can view the entire project here, as well as keep up to date on Instagram and Twitter.
