When I must focus first thing, I want to be alert exactly when needed, so I do not lose the first hour waiting to wake up.

Job context

Who

Someone doing focused work early

When

On the way to work or just at the desk

Trigger

A morning spent staring at the screen without thinking

Situation

Dose and timing decide the result, and neither is measurable

Constraints

Too late costs the night; too early and it is gone by ten

5 Pains

• No idea how strong a cup is

  High

  The same name, two entirely different cups.

  Root cause: No unit is published for what is in a cup

• A late cup costs the night's sleep

  High

  And the next day needs another one.

  Root cause: The consequence appears ten hours after drinking

• Tolerance rises and the dose creeps up

  Medium

  One cup becomes two with no memory of when.

  Root cause: Each increment is too small for anyone to notice

• Stopping brings days of headaches

  Medium

  So almost nobody tries during a working week.

  Root cause: The cost of stopping falls entirely on working days

• Queueing costs fifteen morning minutes

  Medium

  In the tightest stretch of the day.

  Root cause: Everyone needs a cup inside the same narrow window

5 Desired Outcomes

• Know how strong the cup is

  Functional

• Be alert by day and still sleep at night

  Functional

• Hold a steady dose instead of creeping up

  Functional

• Cut down without losing working days

  Functional

• Not spend morning minutes queueing

  Functional

5 Existing Solutions

A solution is not the same thing as a product, a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

• Drink at the same place every morning

  Behaviour

  The only way to hold a steady dose, and it locks you to one place.

• Order ahead in an app and collect

  Product

  Removes the queue, requiring the decision earlier than the need.

• Make it at home or in the office

  Behaviour

  Far cheaper and dose-controlled, losing the walk away from the desk.

• Switch to something lighter after midday

  Workaround

  Protects sleep, resting on a self-set hour rather than on any measurement.

• Read the label on packaged drinks

  Product

  The only source of a number, and it exists only on packaging, never in a café.

2 Opportunity Gaps

• Cafés sell by the cup because a cup is what gets poured and charged, while what determines the effect is the dose, which no café publishes.

  Why existing solutions fail: The dose varies by batch, method and whoever is on the machine, so a published number is either wrong or forces a standardisation cafés do not practise, while packaged drinks, which do carry labels, are the ones dismissed as inferior.

  Potential opportunity: A coarse scale, light, medium, strong, by preparation method, enough to compare two cups without pretending to precision.

• The decision is made in the morning and the consequence appears that night, ten hours and a whole working day apart.

  Why existing solutions fail: The drinker never links the three o'clock cup to lying awake at eleven, because an afternoon and an evening sit between them, so the same mistake repeats weekly and teaches nothing.

  Potential opportunity: Reconnecting the ends for the drinker: logging the hour of the cup beside the quality of the sleep, so the pattern surfaces itself.