One unified drinks experience that spotlights Taco Bell’s Live Más Café
We introduced a Live Más Café layer across app, kiosk, and store locator by reshaping the Drinks category, adding LMC subcategories, and applying store‑aware visuals and exclusivity cues plus location updates for easy discovery.
My role
Lead product designer • Information architect • Visual designer • UX designer
Platforms
Native iOS and Android apps • Kiosk
Year
2025
Research insights and user feedback
Our research and testing surfaced three key insights that shaped Live Más Café’s design.
1. Affordance and color drive action
Tiles with a chevron tested more tappable; purple backgrounds signaled LMC.
2. One category beats two
Guests preferred one Drinks category with LMC subcategories over splitting beverages.
3. Location clarity matters
Guests want visual and text cues to confirm an LMC store before visiting.
Opportunity
How might we make Live Más Café feel distinct and premium while keeping the beverage journey seamless and easily discoverable?
Goals
The following goals guided the design of Live Más Café ensuring the experience was intuitive, on-brand, and built to inspire meaningful fan participation from day one.
1. Seamless customization and sharing experience
Create an intuitive flow for fans to easily build, name, and share custom menu items.
2. Branded, platform-optimized assets
Provide Taco Bell approved visuals tailored for TikTok, Instagram, and other social platforms.
3. Scalable foundation for fan engagement
Design a flexible system ready to support future features like leaderboards and seasonal promos.
Iterations
The Fan Style experience improved through multiple design cycles. Early prototypes explored an open “hack” system, but user research showed terminology and visual polish were crucial leading us to friendlier names and a highly branded look.
As technical constraints arose, the contest leaderboard evolved into a curated “Top Fan Styles” page keeping fan recognition central while streamlining delivery.
Asset options and sharing flows were refined based on usability feedback and close collaboration with legal guided safeguards around moderation and user-generated names. Each round of iteration brought the feature closer to something fans would both use and proudly share.
Challenges
Balancing creative freedom with brand safety was key. We built a robust moderation system to filter inappropriate names, limited visuals to approved gradients and typography, and protected the design system from external misuse. We also addressed product gaps by adding visual cues for modified items. Due to system constraints, we launched with a curated set of fan creations before enabling fully organic submissions.
Final designs
Fan Style’s design centers on native app-friendly style cards with clear ingredient tags, deep links for easy personalization, and a “My Styles” library for fans to save and share their creations. Branded 9:16 shareable assets were also optimized for TikTok and Instagram ensuring the experience was both seamless for users and consistent with Taco Bell’s brand.
Outcome
Fan Style turned custom menu ideas into shareable, buzz‑worthy moments. For a limited time, it became a contest of tracking which creations drove the most orders with top items featured on a curated "Fan Styles” page. This mix of easy customization, branded share assets, and recognition fueled participation, brand love, and measurable results.
1. Strong early engagement
Since launching in late July 2025, the feature has seen rapid adoption. Fans have already created and shared more than 32,000 Fan Styles leading to over 3,600 completed checkouts. The Cheesy Bean & Rice Burrito emerged as the most customized item with fans averaging four customizations per order showing a strong appetite for personalization.
2. Measurable sales impact
Orders featuring a Fan Style delivered a 4% higher average order value compared to standard orders demonstrating that personalization not only engages customers but also drives incremental revenue.
3. Buzz and cultural relevance
Friendly competition and top‑creation visibility drove organic sales and excitement especially with media coverage from outlets like Fast Company and People Magazine.