Project #2 - Design Sprints Part 1

The Latte's & Lager's cafe/bar is the hypothetical new location in Hamilton that serves products "Lift Tea" and "Ration Ale" which we are to think of graphic designs for using Design Thinking Tools including:

• The OPV
• The 180 
• Mind Maps
• Zoom
• 50 Questions
• Idea Maps

First however, is the consideration of branding for the cafe itself, which has been planned lightly on paper:

Then, analysis of the products themselves can be done based on ideas generated when thinking about the cafe:

With these ideas and rough imagery depictions in mind, we can then proceed to use the Design Thinking Tools to expand on concepts and find new ways of thinking about the products.

This post will focus on Lift Tea, described as "a new line of gourmet, organic teas" with "fair-trade sourced" ingredients and both caffeinated and decaf teas in the product line.

The first design tool I had used with this was the OPV or Other Points of View, in order to look at the product from different perspectives:

Then, the 180 degree thinking tool encouraged using seemingly counter-intuitive thought processes to approach the product:

The next in the tools suggested was the Mind Map, which was useful for forming a diagram of the relationships generated from the brand:

Next, a Zoom diagram would express layers of abstraction from the Lift Tea series:

Less graphically, we could also run theoretical design experiments by asking 50 Questions about the product:

Lift Tea - 50 Questions:
1.) Does weather affect sales of hot drinks (eg: tea)?
2.) Does tea have any positive health effects?
3.) Does our target audience care about health?
4.) Does our target audience prefer decaf?
5.) Is caffeine in tea enough to boost energy?
6.) Can we use that as a selling point?
7.) Will graphic "up arrows" be too corny in branding?
8.) What about sky blues, further emphasizing "upward"
9.) Is tea a popular drink amoung our target audience?
10.) If not, how can we increase consumption?
11.) Will being organic increase sales or public image?
12.) Will being fair-trade increase sales or public image?
13.) Does drinking Lift Tea affect the self image of a customer?
14.) Should Lift Tea have a unique aftertaste, or none at all?
15.) Is the use of organic, fair-trade ingredients much more costly?
16.) How much mark-up should Lift Tea make?
17.) Would donating part of the proceeds to charity increase public image?
18.) Would a high price decrease sales, or increase profile of the product?
19.) Is keeping trendy important in the continued sales of the product?
20.) How much advertising should be used to increase sales?
21.) What kinds of advertising should we use to reach the target audience?
22.) What do we do with nearly-expired tea bags if they do not sell?
23.) Will we sell tea bags for use outside of the cafe?
24.) Will we give free tea bag samples away to increase awareness?
25.) Should we run a rewards card for repeat tea customers?
26.) Should purchasing tea be part of a greater good?
27.) If so, how do we demonstrate this to customers?
28.) If customers do not care about this, should we change our vision?
29.) Is break-even pricing an option during intial release?
30.) If so, how will we explain the price increase after establishing the brand?
31.) How will we approach social media of Lift Tea?
32.) Should we encourage recycling with rewards for returned tea bags?
33.) Can used tea bags be used in compost?
34.) Can we find greener ways of shipping the tea to Hamilton?
35.) Is being green still an impressive feature of a product?
36.) If not, what is a new way to get customers excited?
37.) How do we ensure that our target audience are the primary customers?
38.) Is this in the way we brand the tea bags, the pricing, or the advertising?
39.) Should high quality print and material be used for the bags?
40.) Would this improve the brand image?
41.) Is increased packaging quality directly related to increased sales?
42.) What size should the cups be? Does this affect the size tea bags should be?
43.) Is using more than one tea-bag per cup wasteful?
44.) Does this negatively affect customer impressions of the brand?
45.) Does producing both decaf and caffeinated tea bags seem wasteful?
46.) If so, are there health reasons for the cancellation of caffeinated tea?
47.) Will health reasons decrease the backlash from cancelling caffeinated tea?
48.) If not, should we avoid releasing this tea in the first place?
49.) What if that draws complaints?
50.) Would adding a caffeinated tea later on seem like meeting customer demands?

The final graphical technique we learned was the Idea Map, where links form from a central point to different concepts and facets of the product:

Ultimately, the goal of Lift Tea based on these ideas is to produce a tea that appears both healthy and humanitarian to consume, thus becoming much more than a drink to consume but rather an action customers can take to improve the lives of others.

Similar to the cafe itself, the target audience is both the students who may opt for caffeinated tea to boost energy levels, and the older urban professionals who prefer to drink high quality teas. Both could drink decaf tea if sleep is preferred to the energy of caffeine.