The Anti-App
Design lead for New Belgium, 2013 Launched, 2013
Strategy:
People spend more time on their phones than on the people at the table. New Belgium wanted to be on the side of the table. So Beer Mode is an app that needs no attention.
Design:
Pick a personality and a timeframe. Beer Mode posts on your behalf and vaguely replies to your friends while you drink. Wood and brass over a pint-glass gradient, at the height of flat design.
Leadership:
At Made Movement I was the design lead, directing the product experience and every screen. Of the people who opened the app, 40 percent both posted to Facebook and browsed the beer menu.
Built in 2013, when the feed first started winning the hour at the bar.
Product in Hand
Set the dial, face down.
Select Persona: Concerned, Industrious, a face from a fifties catalog. Set Time on a brass gauge. Beer Mode Active, and a countdown over a glass of amber. The menu animates each beer's real IBU and ABV.
Product in Life
Ninety minutes, unbothered.
Pick Concerned, set ninety minutes and put the phone face down on the bar. It posts a paragraph about the home office under your name and answers your cousin. You drink the beer.
Screens
Product in Culture
The brewery has a stake in the hour.
In 2013 every bar table had a phone face up on it, and the feed was winning the hour that used to belong to the people sitting there. A brewery sells that hour. It had a stake in who won it.
Position:
Lead designer at Made Movement
Services:
Research, Strategy, Design
Partner:
New Belgium
Status:
Launched, 2013