Winegrower
INTRO
Winegrower is an app that develops content and partners with wineries to give customers a unique behind-the-scenes look at wine creation while offering fractional ownership powered by NFTs to offer customers a way to feel direct involvement with the wine as it makes its journey to the bottle.
My ROLE
User experience, prototyping, UI design
Brand strategy and creative direction
Product strategy
Service design
Content strategy
Client
Winegrower
Year
2021-2023
Project Type
Wine Enthusiast Mobile & Web App
Credits
Development done by Evline
The Core Concept
A subscription-based SaaS that allows wineries to immerse customers in the wine-making process.
At its core, Winegrower uses modern methodologies and technology to help a traditionally old-school industry forge deeper, more meaningful connections with its customers. For wineries, it unlocks new revenue streams, while for wine enthusiasts, it provides an unparalleled behind-the-scenes experience, bridging the gap between tradition and innovation.
Before diving into the design of key features—such as an interactive wine-growing timeline or innovative elements like live vineyard stats and camera feeds—we began by mapping out the customer journey and touchpoints throughout a typical wine-growing season. This foundational work allowed us to determine the content requirements needed for an MVP launch, ensuring a thoughtful, customer-centric, and iterative development process.
To teach about winemaking, we needed a timeline. One that both educates about the process and exposes relevant content while keeping users engaged over the course of a year.
Key Challenges
One of the initial challenges was immersing myself in the world of wine-growing to build a solid foundation of knowledge. From there, I tackled the task of creating an interactive timeline, designed mobile-first but fully functional across platforms, including mobile and desktop web. Unlike typical horizontal timelines built for event calendars with linear data points, this timeline needed to accommodate multiple overlapping data layers.
I explored dozens of designs and prototypes, conducting extensive user testing to refine the experience. A key focus was finding ways to highlight the various phases of wine-making, cleanly integrating educational and winery-exclusive content, while ensuring that the slower phases didn’t feel sparse or unengaging.
Strategy Highlight
Winegrower needed to keep wine lovers coming back over the year-long process of winemaking and educational evergreen content could only take us so far.
Early on, we recognized that the success of the interactive winemaking timeline hinged on a robust library of content. However, to truly deliver on the promise of exclusive, behind-the-scenes content, we needed to understand what resonated most with customers. Sandhi, the winery behind Winegrower, recognized that while their passion for winemaking encompassed many details, not all of them would align with what wine lovers find engaging.
To bridge this gap, we developed a flexible, web-based experience optimized for both mobile and desktop. This allowed us to quickly deploy and test various content formats, lengths, and styles with real customers, providing valuable insights to shape content production.
Strategy Highlight
What if people didn't just follow the wine's journey but participated?
For the most engaged wine enthusiasts, Winegrower sought to offer an experience that went beyond education and content. Drawing inspiration from Twitch streamers and Web3 influencers, we envisioned a premium membership program that framed the vineyard and its vintage as an asset—one members could feel personally connected to and own a piece of.
Leveraging cutting-edge technologies like NFTs, 3D camera scans of the vineyard, live camera feeds, and temperature sensors, we aimed to immerse members in the winemaking process. This experience included voting on key production decisions, direct access to winemakers through Q&A sessions, and a comprehensive dashboard to track their "investment." With the real vines in the Santa Rita Hills being assigned ownership via an NFT (part of a reserve vineyard called The Set). The journey culminated with members receiving a personalized allocation—ranging from a few bottles to a few cases—allowing them to proudly say, "I own a part of this wine."
