GARDEN GOODS

A Trading App

Role: UX/UI Designer

Team: Jeremy, Christian, Macall

Problem: Backyard gardeners produce more goods than they can consume before spoiling and a desire for greater variety.

Solution: Connect neighborhood gardeners on an app where they can offer to trade/sell/purchase garden surplus.

Timeline: 6 weeks

Tools: Figma, FigJam, Trello, Google Suite 

RESEARCH

Goal:


To understand the needs, frustrations, and goals of backyard gardeners who experience surplus produce and want to prevent waste and expand their garden’s potential.

“Funny, the other day I needed lemons and almost went to a neighbors down the street to offer them some oranges in exchange, but felt like I didn’t want to bother them.”

Approach:

  • Interviewed 6 backyard gardeners to learn more about what they do when they have extra produce from their gardens.

  • Created a survey that we posted on social media asking anyone who has a garden to complete and obtained results from 22 individuals.

  • Mapped out our discoveries to guide our design.

“I love the concept, I mean, some people might be more concerned about meeting with strangers, but I like connecting with my community.”

“I am constantly throwing away tomatoes because can never eat them before they spoil. I hope you make this app come to life.”

SURVERY RESULTS

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Most people have a surplus produced from their garden.

  • Half of the users throw away their excess produce and the other majority give away their hard earned excess.

  • This lets us know that there are a lot of users that can benefit from this app.

AFFINITY DIAGRAM

USER-PERSONA

We created Ryan Green, our user-persona for Garden Goods to quickly define our initial understanding of potential users: people experiencing too much waste or not enough variety from their gardens. This helped align the team early in the design process and guided initial ideation.

USER INSIGHT

STATEMENT

Gardeners need a safe, reliable platform to connect with their local gardening community to trade/sell/purchase excess produce because they want to reduce waste, gain variety, and build meaningful connections with others who share their passion for gardening.

FEATURE PRIORITIZATION MATRIX

Our Feature Prioritization Matrix helped us evaluate product features based on user values and efforts to implement.

Highest priority items:

  • User Profile

  • Geolocation

  • Notifications

  • Local Feed

  • Messaging

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Here is a summary of the Competitor Analysis we conducted using the SWOT method on 3 competitors determining the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of each.

USER FLOW DIAGRAM

SKETCHES AND MID-FIDELITY:

As a team, we began by sketching out different layouts and decided on the most user-friendly layouts for each page. We then developed our low-mid fidelity wireframes.

USABILITY TESTING

Objectives

  • Can users navigate the feed without getting lost or confused.

  • Can users navigate the messaging, trade, and buy features easily.

  • Can users easily make a post.   

Tasks

  • Can the user review the feed?  

  • Can the user make a post? 

  • Can the user offer a trade?

  • Can the user inquire to purchase? 

  • Can the user navigate to messages?

PROTOTYPING

FIRST HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE:

After we had finalized our basic design concepts based on our user feedback and sketches, we created our first interactive high-fidelity prototypes, keeping our users primary pain points in mind: excess produce, wasting, and variety.

ITERATED HIGH-FIDELITY