Introduction
A case study presenting complete design process of new Vitamin/Energy Drink.
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Target Groups
The current Vitamin/Energy drinks in the market are primarily designed for the people who follow an active fitness and sports routines, or to get an energy boost and alertness. We realized that there is a gap and wanted to create a drink that tends to the historically excluded group, those that don't focus entirely on sports and fitness or getting energy boost, but still want to lead an active lifestyle.
The current Vitamin/Energy drinks in the market are primarily designed for the people who follow an active fitness and sports routines, or to get an energy boost and alertness. We realized that there is a gap and wanted to create a drink that tends to the historically excluded group, those that don't focus entirely on sports and fitness or getting energy boost, but still want to lead an active lifestyle.
We identified 5 groups:
1. 35-55 years old women in autumn of her life.
2. 25-45 years old parents who have too much on their mind.
3. 35-50 years old men or women in their mid-life crisis
4. 55+ years old men or women who do not want to just play the role of a grandparents
5. 25-35 years old men or women who do not want to be a corporate rat, do not want to be considered boring.
We decided to proceed 25-35 years old men or women, who do want to be considered corporate rats. They do not want to be considered boring and challenge themselves on a daily basis to reach both their personal and career goals.
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Persona
To better envision for whom are we designing, we decided to create two personas:
Name: Ben
Age: 29
Nationality: German, born in UK
Education: B.Sc. in Data Science
Work: In big company in Cologne as senior analyst; recently promoted
"I have so much to do but so little energy and time"
Description: He has been working for 4 years in his company. He's been successful at work and new challenges are arising ahead of him all the time. He was not born in Germany so he is trying to find time to attend German courses. Obviously he wants to do some sports in any available moment. He loves football and is playing from to time with few friends. He wants to go to the gym more often and visit parties every weekend. At least for a few hours.
Hobbies: Data Science, audiobooks, programming in Python, football, fitness and workout
Sites and apps he is using: Twitter and LinkedIn for social media, Audible for audiobooks, YouTube, Netflix, Apple Music, Freeletics for workouts, Urbans sports club
Name: Stefan
Age: 26
Nationality: Austrian
Education: Finished only high school; trying to get accepted to local university to study electrical engineering
Work: Working late shift or night shift at local grocery store (Kiosk)
"3 more hours to finish the shift, then maybe I will have enough energy to go for a run. Uff, in the morning I have classes again, I hope, I would not oversleep."
Description: Stefan moved with his mother to Germany when he was 14. He has not made any friends at school and his old ones abandoned him. His father died 4 years ago. He is doing his best to be independent as he cannot count on support from anyone. He would like to find the love of his life some day. Likewise, he believes that higher education is the key to a good and stable job and therefore future.
Hobbies: running, documentary videos, German Hip-hop, Bollywood's movies
Sites and apps he is using: Strava for running, YouTube, ARD, ZDF and Netflix for videos, Instagram as social media, Spotify for music
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Problem Statements
During this process we created over a dozen Problem Statements.
Here are our 2 favorites:
Ben is a football player who needs energy to play with his friends and perform at his best at work because he does not want to sacrifice either.
Stefan is a hard-working person who needs constant supply of vitamins because
he cannot afford to fall sick.
Conclusions:
We need to focus on constant supply of energy through the day. It definitely should provide essential vitamin supply and be part of a healthy and balanced diet. Further, our design should convey being part of active lifestyle and reaching daily goals.
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Competitors Analysis
Based on research we found 4 groups of vitamin water and assigned a representative brand to each of the group:
1. Vitamin drink for people who love to exercise and lead healthy lifestyle. Represented by Celsius.
2. Generic brands offering water with additions of vitamin but not having any detailed target group or message. Represented by Oshee
3. Vendors focusing on eco-conscious, healthy lifestyle. Represented by foodspring
4. Brands serving hardcore sportspeople. Represented by PowerBar
While analyzing all brands we noticed that key factors are the brand groups focus and design themes.
As shown on the diagram, we would like to create an appealing brand, focused on specific group and Celsius would be our hero brand.
Conclusions coming for competitors analysis:
1. It must clear based on packaging for whom is the product oriented (what is the target group).
2. Theme must be clear, the success depends on content congestion, visual hierarchy and the message.
3. Most popular is white background and sans-serif fonts.
4. The product should have the main theme with its color, but there should be additional clues suggesting flavor and freshness.
5. Use ginger and mate as natural, plant-based amino acids sources.
6. Product claims to be considered: easy available energy, no calories, free from artificial flavors, natural caffeine, Bio, Vegan, Clinically tested, dietary supplements; 0 sugar, gluten-free, non-GMO; certified Vegan.
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Prototypes
Based on Crazy Eight's exercise we created 5 prototypes:
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Customer Study
Then we conducted Customer Studies (n=7). Highlights from summary:
- purple color is not raising connotations with the drink.
- charging station and electricity are raising thoughts connected with oil and industrial fluids.
- stuff to finish, like to-do list is inducing negative emotions, therefore we decided to change names of the drink.
- runner must resemble a more human being, shoes are looking weird.
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Name and branding
In next step we decided to focus on name selection as our previous customer survey clearly indicated our naming is confusing and overall bad. We proceeded with a design thinking session and creating a mind map showing possible names. Below are the results:
We choose '5 am.' as our brand name. Then we decided to explore the typography.
We decided on Futura. It is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed. Futura has an appearance of efficiency and forwardness which captures the spirit of our Brand.
We choose our final Logotype to be:
For the next round of study we created 2 designs:
Final design
Finally, we decided to proceed with 5am. and 'The last Mile' flavor. It was connecting our target group better, and it was not as obvious as the products by our competition. In next rounds of discussions we changed colors to suit more the color of our brand name, the color of the dawn sky at 5am. We further moved barcode down to reduce risk of unreadable barcode.
