UX Research and Product Managementtāst Coffee
tāst Coffee was founded by three friends with strong roots in art, literature, and design — each bringing their own creative sensibility to a shared love of coffee. They had a product that could compete with established brands, but no digital presence to match their vision. The challenge was clear: turn a passionate local following into a cohesive online experience that reflected the brand’s quality and storytelling.
The goal was to create an e-commerce experience that not only sold coffee but also translated the brand’s ethos — creativity, community, and craftsmanship — into design. The site needed to feel as intentional and layered as their product: beautiful, minimal, and built with purpose.
My focus was on defining the content structure, aligning brand messaging, and setting the foundation for future UX decisions and scalable design while keeping the stakeholders’ and designers’ goals aligned.
We hired Happy Site Club to develop the website.
Research and understanding the userGoing Deep
We conducted a competitive analysis of direct-to-consumer coffee brands and identified a pattern: many focused on sleek aesthetics but neglected clarity. Product details were buried under heavy visuals, and brand storytelling often felt generic.
tāst Coffee needed to stand apart — visually confident yet content-driven.
The research led to three core design principles:
Tell the brand story upfront.
Guide users through purposeful navigation.
Keep every element intentional — no fluff, no filler.
Design Approach & StrategyWorking closely with the founders, I helped define the site’s content hierarchy and flow. We designed around key storytelling touchpoints — the founders’ narrative, product origins, and community roots, without sacrificing conversion clarity.
Homepage: Introduced the brand with narrative copy and product visuals that felt editorial rather than commercial.
Shop Page: Minimal layout emphasizing roast type, flavor notes, and origin transparency.
About Page: Structured like a mini-magazine feature, blending photography with the brand story.
The UX and content decisions were made to balance emotion and function — a layout that made you feel something first, then guided you to act.
LO-fidelity wireframes
hi-fidelity wireframes
Key ChallengesThe main challenge was building an online identity and digital strategy from scratch while maintaining consistency across tone, visuals, and usability. Balancing storytelling with conversion required restraint: too much narrative risked slowing the experience, while too little could lose the brand’s character.
What I Learnedtāst Coffee reinforced the value of starting with story before structure. Every piece of UX and content strategy should be rooted in understanding who the brand is and what makes it meaningful to its users.
This project became a reminder that great UX isn’t just about usability — it’s about identity. When design and narrative work together, even a small brand can feel iconic.