MAAS – Sustainable Coffee Experience
UX & Visual Design | New Product Development | HvA 2023
Designing a more sustainable and user-friendly coffee experience for students through gamification, system thinking, and empathy-driven UX design.
View full posters -> Google Drive
| Role | UX & Visual Designer |
|---|---|
| Duration | 5 weeks |
| Team | Lua Telgt, Elijah Delgado, Jade van Schaik |
| Tools | Figma, Illustrator, Miro |
| Course | New Product Development, AUAS CMD |
Redesigning MAAS for clarity and sustainability
MAAS coffee machines at the HvA were frustrating students: unclear feedback, failed payments, and wasted drinks.
Our challenge was to make the process both smoother and more sustainable — reducing waste while keeping the experience fun and motivating.
We created the persona Lisa, a 22-year-old law student who gets coffee to recharge between classes. Through our experience map, we discovered that long waits, payment errors, and unclear machine feedback led to frustration and waste.
These insights helped us identify key improvement areas: feedback clarity, sustainability incentives, and social connection.
We used creative techniques like the Bloem Associatie, Crazy 8s, and “How Might We” questions to generate over 40 ideas around the challenge.
The MAAS App – Coffee that rewards sustainability
The app helps students quickly locate nearby MAAS machines through a clean list-and-map interface. This helps to avoid crowded machines, and supports different navigation preferences.
In the same flow, users can track their personal sustainability impact. This includes CO₂ reduction, money saved, and earned MaasMunten (Maas Coins).
By visualizing progress, the app reinforces positive habits and turns everyday coffee moments into meaningful contributions.
The Rewards and Shop screens motivate users to make greener decisions through discounts, redeemable items, and group actions such as Coffee-Pooling. Bringing your own cup or ordering together earns extra points, reducing machine restarts and energy waste.
The Pre-Order flow further streamlines the coffee experience by letting users customize and pay in advance. This minimizes waiting time, reduces spillage, and prevents payment errors, hereby addressing some of the biggest pain points found in our research.
Results & Reflection
Our final concept significantly improved the MAAS coffee experience by addressing the key pain points students faced: unclear machine feedback, wasted drinks, and unpredictable waiting times. The redesigned flow makes ordering coffee faster, smarter, and more sustainable. Incentives like Coffee-Pooling and MaasMunten rewards encourage greener habits without compromising convenience, turning everyday coffee moments into positive behavioral change.
Throughout this project, I learned how to connect user needs with broader system goals such as sustainability and efficiency. Translating research insights into practical UX decisions strengthened my ability to design experiences that guide behavior rather than dictate it. I also gained a deeper understanding of communicating ideas visually, balancing functionality with a friendly, illustrative style that users can engage with effortlessly.
If I were to continue the project, I would focus on usability testing to validate the new flows, explore accessibility improvements, and consider how the concept could scale to other locations beyond HvA.