Situation

Minnesota craft brewery fans have an app just for them: mncraft.beer. Users can easily locate and learn about all the breweries in the state and track the ones they have visited. Many ambitious users use the app to track their progress towards their goal of visiting all 200+ Minnesota breweries.

The mncraft.beer app development team at The Jed Mahonis group (JMG) needed to know what users wanted and to confirm assumptions about their motivations for using the app. JMG had several ideas for features to add to its mncraft.beer app but lacked user input to prioritize or consider other needs. Without user insights, JMG would lose the opportunity to improve the app for users and would waste effort by developing unwanted features.

Approach

I wanted JMG to have a clear roadmap for app development based on user insights. I met with the app’s creator, Tim Bornholdt, to understand where they were in development and where they wanted to go. One of the ideas was to create a trip planning feature, and so I looked at several trip planning apps and mocked up how it could work with mncraft.beer to see if it would be possible within the current design. I then conducted six 30-minute interviews with “super users” to learn why they use the app, gauge their reactions to the five proposed features, and hear their own ideas for the app.

Result

We learned the highest priority for any changes was actually different than what the development team was thinking of doing. JMG used users’ needs and feedback to prioritize, sequence, and plan development of new features.

Get your craft brewery tracking on at mncraft.beer.