Case Study

Reimagining how people discover sustainable coffee

A complete brand and product redesign for Bloom Coffee — turning a struggling subscription service into a community-driven platform with 340% growth.

Role

Lead Product Designer

Timeline

14 Weeks

Year

2024

Read the full story or scroll to explore

Good morning ☀️

Your Bloom

🔔

This Week's Pick

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe

Arriving in 3 days

🌱

Carbon Neutral

🤝

Fair Trade

📦

Zero Waste

Community Picks

🇨🇴
🇧🇷
🇰🇪
Brand Strategy UX/UI Design Design Systems User Research Prototyping Visual Identity Motion Design
Brand Strategy UX/UI Design Design Systems User Research Prototyping Visual Identity Motion Design

The project at a glance

Bloom Coffee approached us with a clear challenge: their brand didn't reflect the quality and values of their product, and their app was losing subscribers faster than they could acquire them.

Brand Identity

Logo, typography, color system, voice

Mobile App

iOS & Android redesign, 42 screens

Web Experience

E-commerce site & landing pages

Design System

Scalable component library

⚠️

The Problem

Despite sourcing exceptional single-origin beans and maintaining fair-trade partnerships, Bloom Coffee was losing 40% of subscribers within the first 90 days. Customer interviews revealed three core issues:

  • The brand felt generic — users couldn't articulate what made Bloom different from any other coffee subscription
  • The app was confusing — users couldn't easily customize their preferences or understand their next delivery
  • No sense of community — subscribers felt like transactions, not members of a movement
🎯

The Goal

Our mission was to transform Bloom from a commodity subscription into a mission-driven experience that:

Reduce churn by 60%

Within the first 6 months post-launch

Increase NPS by 30pts

From a baseline of 22 to 52+

Double daily active usage

Create reasons to open the app beyond delivery tracking

Build a recognizable brand

That communicates sustainability at a glance

Where they started

Before
BC

Bloom Coffee Co.

Generic sans-serif, flat brown

"It looked like every other coffee brand out there."

After
B

bloom.

Playfair Display, warm earth tones

"A brand that tells a story before you even read it."

How We Did It

Process & Craft

Great design isn't a single moment of inspiration — it's a series of intentional decisions, each informed by research and refined through iteration.

01 Week 1–2

Discovery & Research

We started by understanding the people behind the data. Through 24 user interviews, a competitive audit of 12 subscription services, and a deep dive into Bloom's internal analytics, we uncovered patterns that numbers alone couldn't reveal.

Key Insight

"People don't just want coffee delivered. They want to feel connected to the farmers, the story of each bean, and a community that shares their values."

24

User Interviews

12

Competitors Analyzed

3

User Personas

87

Survey Responses

User Journey Map — Pain Points

Sign Up
Customize
Wait
Receive
Renew?

Brand Positioning Matrix

Premium Accessible

Blue Bottle

Starbucks

Intelligentsia

bloom. ✦

Community + Sustainability

Traditional Community-Driven
02 Week 3–4

Strategy & Positioning

The research revealed a clear white space: no coffee subscription brand was truly community-first. We positioned Bloom not as a delivery service, but as a "coffee club" — a place where curious coffee lovers connect with origin stories, each other, and their own evolving tastes.

Authentic Warm Curious Transparent Crafted
03 Week 5–9

Design & Craft

Every design decision served the strategy. The warm earth-tone palette reflects the natural origins of the product. The typography pairs editorial elegance with approachable readability. And the app's information architecture was rebuilt from the ground up to reduce cognitive load.

Aa

Typography System

Playfair Display for headings, Inter for UI — creating editorial warmth

Color System

Earth-inspired palette with 5 primary tones and 12 supporting shades

Design System

86 components, tokens-based, documented for handoff

bloom.

Your Cup

Colombian Supremo

Color Palette

Community

Sarah M.

Just tried the Ethiopian — the floral notes are incredible! 🌸

James K.

The farmer story for this batch was so moving.

Components

Usability Testing Results

Task Completion Rate 94%
System Usability Scale 82/100
Task Success (Before) 41%
Task Success (After) 94%
04 Week 10–12

Testing & Refinement

We ran 3 rounds of usability testing with 16 participants each, iterating on everything from the onboarding flow to the micro-interactions. Each round revealed new opportunities — and we took them. The result was an experience that felt intuitive from the first tap.

What Changed Most

The subscription customization flow went from a 7-step linear process to a visual, card-based preference builder that felt more like choosing from a menu than filling out a form.

The Impact

Results that speak for themselves

Six months after launch, the numbers told a dramatically different story.

📈

340%

Growth in active subscribers

from 2,400 → 10,560

💚

-68%

Reduction in 90-day churn

from 40% → 12.8%

58

Net Promoter Score

up from 22 (+36pts)

📱

2.4×

Increase in daily active usage

avg. session: 4.2 min

"Mira didn't just redesign our app — they redefined what Bloom is. Our customers now describe us as 'the coffee brand that actually cares.' That's the change we've been trying to create for years."
AL

Alex Liu

Founder & CEO, Bloom Coffee

Key Takeaways

01

Values must be visible, not just stated

Bloom's sustainability wasn't a bullet point — it became the visual language, the tone of voice, and the core of every interaction.

02

Community beats convenience

The features that drove the most engagement weren't the most practical — they were the ones that connected people to each other and to the story.

03

Iteration is non-negotiable

Our first prototype scored a 61 on SUS. The third scored 82. The difference was listening to real users and having the humility to change course.

Reflection

What I learned

This project reinforced something I've come to believe deeply: the best design work happens at the intersection of empathy and craft. It's not enough to make things beautiful, and it's not enough to make things usable. The magic happens when you make things that help people feel something.

Bloom's success wasn't about a clever feature or a striking logo. It was about understanding what their users truly wanted — a sense of belonging, a story worth telling, and the confidence that their morning ritual was doing good in the world.

If there's one thing I'd do differently, it's that I'd have pushed harder for the community features from day one. The data showed their power, but I should have trusted the research even earlier in the process.

Tools & Technologies

F
Figma
Pr
Principle
Mn
Miro
G
Google Analytics
St
Storybook
Next Steps

Have a project that needs this level of thinking?

I partner with founders and product teams who want more than pixels — they want strategy, craft, and outcomes. If that sounds like you, let's start a conversation.