Five phone screens of the Wineally wine pairing app in burgundy: restaurants, a welcome screen, a list of matches, a food and wine pairing and a wine detail.

Making wine pairing magical

Wineally’s wine pairing app had low adoption. Built first for waiters, it confused consumers, and it looked cheap and messy for a product that sells wine. I redesigned it around how a consumer thinks, based on user research instead of engineering constraints.

I was the sole designer, in-house. The redesign was designed and tested but never built: Wineally ran out of funding.

Year

2023

Duration

3 months

Client

Wineally AB, Sweden (through EC solutions)

Engagement

Sole designer; never built

Role

  • UX research
  • Wireframing
  • Testing
  • Visual design
Four screens of the original Wineally app: a welcome screen, a wine matcher, a wine detail and a restaurant chooser.

The problem

Wineally had a very low adoption rate on their wine pairing mobile app. The first version was focused on waiters at a restaurant and needed to be rethought to work for consumers.

The little feedback they had was not positive: users had a hard time figuring out what the app was for and how to use it, and the look did not match the brand or the people it was meant for.

The goal was to increase adoption by rethinking the user flows to match what users want and expect, and by redesigning the visual look to be more appealing to the target market. No new functionality would be developed at this stage.

What was going wrong

By creating the user story of a current app user, I helped stakeholders empathise and identify the concrete pain points in the existing flows, and got buy-in for the redesign. The main problems:

  • Confusing, complicated and unappealing onboarding
  • Visual problems with hierarchy, grouping and consistency
  • A matching flow modelled on shopping, but with no “checkout” or outcome shown
  • No “magic”: the result felt underwhelming
Two comic-style panels of a user story: the user is pleased with a pairing but unsure how to save or order it, then overwhelmed by the amount of information on the wine detail screen.

What users wanted

We ran a survey with 48 participants about their dining and wine habits, their experience with wine recommendation apps, and the functionality and information they wanted.

It showed which information potential users find useful when choosing a wine, and what other apps were doing right.

Charts from the survey of 48 participants: bar charts and a pie chart about wine habits, and what information people want in a wine app.

The decision: think like a consumer

A flowchart of the app: finding a restaurant, wine matching, the wine list and detail, favorites and the user page.

User flows

The first version was shaped by how the system worked and how waiters used it. I started from how a consumer thinks and what they want, based on the research and not on engineering constraints.

I broke user goals into specific tasks, grouped them into screens and created logical flows, a blueprint for the interface.

Auditing what stays

For the flows that would be kept (login, onboarding, venue choice), I did a heuristic UX evaluation to pinpoint the usability problems and possible solutions.

UX audit slides for the location search result, choose restaurant and welcome pages, each listing observations and recommendations.
Wireframes of the app’s screens, shown at an angle on a grey background.

Wireframes and prototype

Based on the flows and the evaluation, I created wireframes for each flow and then a prototype, which let us see the page structure and refine the flows and functionality.

Testing the prototype

What the test showed

I ran a remote unmoderated usability test with 20 users: three tasks (choosing, choosing wine options and matching, adding to favourites), a rating of how easy each felt, and open feedback.

On the main mission, 82.4% of testers succeeded directly and 5.9% did not finish. The weak spot was the wine info screen: 64% of users misclicked and its usability score was 58, so that is the clearest thing to fix next.

Usability test results: mission success rates and a breakdown of time spent, mistaps and usability score for each screen.
A row of the final app screens in Wineally’s burgundy visual style: onboarding, log in, restaurants, a wine detail, matches and favorites.

Visual design and reusable components

With the wireframes as a starting point, I developed the app interface, keeping the brand’s visual elements but with an updated look that is easier to use. I used established mobile design patterns that would be familiar to users, and built reusable design components that could be the base for all future development.

The new app is more streamlined, showing only the elements relevant to the current task, and the structure and look help users navigate. The visual style matches the brand better and gives a more exclusive feeling.

Before and after

The original wine matcher screen: a dense list of starters, wines and prices.
Before
The redesigned Food & Wine screen with a “My matches” card, a match score and a New Match button.
After

Wine & food matching

The original wine detail screen: a long table of properties and suggested pairings.
Before
The redesigned wine detail screen with a large bottle image, location and wine properties.
After

Wine details

The original restaurant search screen with a map and a search button.
Before
The redesigned restaurants screen with find-by tabs, a map and a list of results.
After

Restaurant search

What changed

  • Flows and functionality that match the users’ mental model and are more intuitive
  • A simplified interface that makes the relevant information easy to find
  • Modern, attractive styling that matches the target market better
  • Results presented in a more straightforward and appealing way, raising the app’s perceived value

What happened

Wineally ran out of funding before the app could be developed, so it never launched and there is no adoption data. The prototype test is the evidence I have: it showed the redesign was usable, and where it still needed work.

Same client, a different problem: an internal tool instead of a consumer app.

See the Wineally backoffice

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