Research

01 Overview

Understanding wine tasting

To inform the design of our wine tasting website we first looked to understand the process in which people normally search for and host wine tastings. We utilized a variety of design research methods:

• Directed Storytelling - to examine people's intent before, during, and after wine tastings
• Bricks and Mortar Observation - to understand wine tastings in the physical space
• Competitive Analysis - to identify features available in current wine tasting websites

Our research results culminated in a host of ideas, all of which are documented on the following pages.

How We Got Into It

Last August, Michele was walking down Penn Avenue in the Strip with her parents, and happened upon a wine tasting in progress at Palate Partners, a wine-oriented gift shop. She loved it. Four months later, when this class assignment came up, she jumped at the opportunity to represent her newfound interest in a design-oriented setting. She contacted Mike Gonze and Deb Mortillaro, owners of Palate Partners. Mike and Deb warmly invited us to join them at as many tastings as we liked, offered us hours of advice and gave us supplies for our in-class demonstration. In all, we attended three Palate Partners wine tastings, at which we spoke with the wine tasters fictitiously represented here.