Bloom Bakers App

Developing a mobile app for bakers to increase profits through price comparison and earnings tracking

Client

Bloom Bundt Cakes, LLC.

2 Week Design Sprint + Continuing Development

Role & Project

UX/UI Designer

Bloom Bundt Cakes is a micro bakery, located in Arizona. Previously, I worked with them as a brand designer, creating the logo and brand identity.

After finishing the design work, Bloom wanted to create an app specifically for home bakers that would help increase profits consistently. Having the background knowledge of the brand already, Bloom asked for my help in designing a concept for a mobile app, with the plan for future development. This time, my role extended beyond providing visuals, and we began a 2-week design sprint to kick off the project.

Discovery & Research

Home bakers face a unique challenge in that many of them work with a small team and need tools that are equipped to help streamline the processes that commercial bakeries normally have entire teams to tackle.

Bloom’s vision was to have an app that allows users to search for the best prices and to compare profit margins based on the total cost of ingredients for each recipe.

To better understand the needs of home bakers, I first began researching the life of home bakers and what their needs and pain points are. I followed multiple accounts on Instagram and read through posts on Facebook groups for home bakers to gain insight into the field.

During my research, I found that it is very common for new home bakers to underprice their goods, and it's usually for two reasons:

Lack of information
Lack of confidence

With this in mind, I began thinking of how to address these two areas to help bakers confidently price their baked goods in a way that would generate a profit based on their individual bakery.

Research

Information Architecture

User Persona and Mapping

Before getting to any sketches, I started by putting together a user persona named Jane. Jane's profile was based on the research I gathered previously when reviewing various home bakers on social media.

To assist with visualizing the most needed features for the app, I created an empathy map and a user journey map for Jane, which helped me glean valuable insights.

These maps allowed me to see what users would likely be looking for when navigating the app, and what their pain points are.

Branding

Having previously worked on designing Bloom Bundt Cakes' brand, I took components of the original branding to create elements for the Bloom Bakers App to create a cohesive look between Bloom's website and the app.

Shown below are some of the brand components and the elements used for the mobile app.

Protoyping

I first began sketching out my idea for the home screen on paper, and I translated that into a paper prototype.

For the home screen, I wanted to highlight two key components: profits and recipes.

In marketing, I learned that one very important piece to reaching your target audience is to put what they care about first. In this case, the Bloom Bakers App is focused on helping home bakers make a consistent profit. By putting a visual to show monthly profits, users will be excited to check back in and also update their earnings to see the trend.

I also added recipes right below because of the importance they play in the pricing strategy. Bakers must use the price of their ingredients as the base from which they build their pricing structure for their items. By adding a recipe section, users can add and edit recipes, then convert that into a shopping list or the base for their prices.

Home Screen

Sprint Results

Clickable Prototype

For the high fidelity prototype, I created screens for the task of adding a new recipe to the user's recipes section. The prototype also has the hamburger menu functionality to move between the home screen and the initial recipes page.

Continued Development

After presenting the high fidelity prototype to my client, the owners of Bloom Bundt Cakes were excited to continue development of the app. We plan to build out an MVP and begin user testing in the next stage.

As we continue progressing, I'll keep updating this case study with results and findings.