1951 Coffee Company
Consultant (Contract)
Prototyping Lead
Figma
Photoshop
Qualtrics
1 Project Mentor
4 Consultants
Brand Strategy
Brand Design
UX Research
September - December 2025
Role
Focus
Tools
Team
Timeline
This project was so rewarding because our team frequently visited 1951 Coffee Company and stayed in close communication with our point of contact through regular client calls. I particularly enjoyed the product shoot, where our team captured the beautiful menu items in the shop. While working on this project, I learned the importance of conducting stakeholder interviews when possible, as they allow us to truly understand the internal challenges faced by employees.
Thank you to 1951 Coffee Company for trusting us, and also to my team members for being so supportive!
Product Shoot For Social Media Feed
Our team visited 1951 Coffee Company to conduct an on-site product shoot, capturing vibrant photography and videography in order to enhance their social media feed.
Deliverables
Brand Book
We created a comprehensive brand guidelines book to establish a clear and cohesive brand identity. The guide defined visual standards such as color, typography, and layout, as well as brand voice, tone, and messaging principles. It also included social media templates and usage guidelines to help ensure consistency across platforms, enabling the team to create content with confidence and efficiency moving forward.
Some key pages:
Reflection
Context
Background
1951 Coffee Company, located near UC Berkeley, is a non-profit specialty coffee organization that promotes the well-being of the refugee community in the United States by providing job training and employment to refugees, asylees, and special immigrant visa holders while educating the surrounding community about refugee life and issues.
The Problem
The organization lacks clear brand guidelines and a consistent set of social media assets, making it difficult to maintain a cohesive online presence. A lack of clarity around brand voice, combined with political and privacy concerns, has created hesitation around posting content. Due to these challenges, the organization’s ability to effectively reach its community online has been limited.
HMW Statement
How might we explore customer journeys and engagement behaviors to uncover opportunities where branding, digital content, and accessibility improvements can be made to create brand-aligned content strategy suggestions and design a brand kit?
Ideation
Crazy 8s and Crazy 8s Organized by Theme
Effort vs. Impact Matrix
After synthesizing customer journeys and research insights, our team conducted Crazy 8s to rapidly brainstorm ideas within an eight-minute timeframe. We then organized and refined these ideas, selecting our strongest concepts to be evaluated on an effort vs. impact matrix.
User Persona and Journey
Additionally, we created three user personas and journeys to understand 1951 Coffee Company’s consumer segments across different age groups.
Meet Luna, Arjun, and Eric:
Synthesizing From Research
Affinity Mapping
Following our research process, we noted down key insights and organized them by theme. We then reached the following conclusions:
Digital Marketing
Develop consistent, cohesive brand aesthetic to increase social media engagement
Mission Perception
Increase feel-good spending messaging and personal connections to increase mission visibility
Customer Motivations
Promote customer loyalty programs or social events through word-of-mouth discovery and increase retention
Environment & Service
Incentivize customers to utilize 3rd space and convenient location and encourage organic marketing
Research
Competitor SWOT Analysis
Our team began by conducting a competitive analysis of coffee shops to understand industry trends, branding strategies, and customer experience patterns. This helped us identify both effective approaches and common gaps within the market.
Social Listening
Summarized Consumer Survey Methodology
How do you discover new coffee shops? (Select all that apply)
Does social media advertising by coffee shops affect your purchase decisions?
How important is it for you to understand a company’s purpose or impact?
Based on reviews from the platforms above, we saw that customers value affordable pricing, fast service, and promotions. When it comes to menu items, customers appreciate high-quality matcha, seasonal items, and popular drinks. Beyond the items, the shop’s convenient location and seating options make it a popular study space for UC Berkeley and Berkeley High School students.
Number of Questions: 12
Number of Respondents: 100+
Goals:
Understand how people choose coffee shops
Identify the values that influence purchasing decisions
Assess perceptions of 1951’s brand
Summarized Consumer Interview Methodology
Summarized Stakeholder Interview Methodology
Goals:
Identify values, motivations, and barriers influencing coffee shop selection
Gather insights to inform brand messaging and social media strategy
Number of Interviewees: 15
10 individuals who knew of 1951 Coffee Company, and 5 who did not
Contextual Inquiry Questions:
*Instruct interviewee to find a coffee shop online*: Observe what measures they take to search for/discover coffee shops.
*Have interviewee open up 1951’s website and socials*: How do you feel about the company’s visual aesthetics? What do you like and dislike?
Summarized Responses:
Content creation is time consuming in terms of ideation, understanding algorithms, editing, and the overall process.
Stakeholders are looking for materials to facilitate their content and brand creation with emphasis on reaching new customers
Goals:
Interview 1951 Coffee Company staff and program managers to understand internal needs, workflows, and goals for branding tools
Gather insight on how the brand kit and assets can best support staff accessibility, and consistent storytelling across platforms
Summarized Responses:
People thoroughly supported the mission, motivating them to visit 1951. However, people care about the coffee first (quality, aesthetics, flavors, etc).
The feed is personable as it shows off the workers, however, it does not have enough content of the menu items
People enjoy discovering coffee shops using platforms that have reviews (Tik Tok comments, Yelp reviews, Beli Review)
Interviewees: 3 stakeholders responsible for content creation at 1951 Coffee Company