find a farmer

project brief

Recently I got to know a farmer I worked for. I saw firsthand how much work  it took to own and operate her small business, leaving her with little time to connect with a community of farmers.

In the past, farmers created community through in-person events. The grange, and local markets served as spaces for farmers to meet.

Nowadays, many farmers running their own businesses and living busy lives don’t have access to a physical space to gather.

Nevertheless they need an efficient way to connect with each other and cultivate community — a welcoming space where farmers can exchange ideas and advice.

duration

• January - August 2021

Roles

• Mobile app design

• Research to conception

• UX writer, visual design

The Design Process

Step 1 Research 📝 Secondary, Competitive Research

Step 2 Concept 💡 Sketches, Ideate, Break-down

Step 3 Design 🎨 Wireframes, Mockups

Step 4 Prototype 📱 Figma Mock-ups and Prototypes

Step 5 Circle Back 👥 Usability Tests, followup survey

📝 Step 1 | Research

Identifying the problem

To begin, I started with secondary research to understand the problem space. I read journals and articles about CSA (consumer supported agriculture) models and best practices, as well as the effects it has as an agent of change. For many, CSA’s are an attempt at implementing a new economic relationship between farmers and consumers.

After I understood the space in which the problem exists I conducted competitor research. Farmersonly.com and agfuse.com were the top sites attempting to connect farmers specifically. Agfuse functions as a message board for farmers and farmersonly is targeted at those farmers looking for relationships with like minded peoples.

I theorized that current solutions were ineffective due to low activity and that farmers needed a dedicated space to meet others quickly, as well a market their CSA's. Facebook groups appeared to be the most popular places for farmers to meet online. Through facebook groups I found several farmers who were interested in being interviewed as well as their customers, to see if they were satisfied by the community the farmers created for them. First I had to screen both of them for eligibility.

This is the screener I sent to farmers I might interview. I knew I wanted to connect small farm owners, who were short on time. I eliminated large farms as well as gathered information about how farmers were currently speaking with their customers and colleagues. I sent a different one to their customers but I quickly learned it was only the farmers I’d be focusing on.

Interviews

I spoke with 5 local farmers and 3 customers to understand the current dynamic. I wanted to see if the customers were satisfied with the current level of interaction from the farmers they purchase from. Most of the farmers I spoke to said they had facebook groups for their members. I quickly realized that these were sufficient. All of the customers i spoke to were not interested in hearing more or less, from the farmers they purchase from.

However while speaking with the farmers, I realized they all had one common need; a community. Farmers all stressed their lack of free time. They also all said they don’t speak often to other farmers often. This is due to many reasons, no spare time, living far away from one another and having no space online that fits their needs. All 5 farmers uses at least email but 2 of the farmers said that they didn’t use any social media because of how time consuming it is.

One farmer mentioned that this lack of communication was due to the time it takes to type or text a message. Farmers simply do not have enough time in their days to create friendships with other farmers. Another farmers said that facebook groups were ineffective because she had questions for other farmers that were hard to properly describe through text. One farmer noted that she had no interest in social media at all but felt isolated without a community.

Synthesizing My Research

After my interviews I created this affinity map. I began by jotting down all important statements, then categorizing the similarities I saw.

Once I understood how farmers felt, I created personas based on my affinity map. These personas represent the farmers I am designing for, their needs and their pain points as well as what they would gain.

This is the first persona I created from my first affinity map. Showing a farmer who spends all day working on her farm. She values her customers and the work she does, but wishes she had a community of her own.

The second persona and affinity map depicts a farmer who has a family as well as a CSA farm to manage. This farmer is incredibly busy and wishes she had time to connect with other farmers.

💡Step 2 | Concept : creating a community

Break Down

The app concept is to offer farmers an efficient way to meet and connect with each other through video messages. Farmers can find each other through different features in the app. They can search users by interest, key words or location and as a result, users can quickly meet and share ideas and advice.

find a farmer has been designed to create connections between farmers while creating a larger community that integrates with their busy lives. The current online platforms farmers use are inefficient due to the time it takes to use them.

Sketches

Below are a few different concept sketches I made at various stages of the design process.

🎨Step 3 | Design

Wireframes

I created multiple wireframes both on pen and paper, in procreate on the iPad as well as digitally in Figma. Flushing out ideas allowed for important feedback about features and layout. During this i kept paper notes and lists about what features to include and what elements to build.

Mock-Up

Main Features

📱 Video messaging - users can quickly send videos back and forth

👥 Interest groups - users can find each other based on interests

❓ Community Questions - users can post questions on their profile for the community. These questions are also on the landing page, prompting conversation.

All the screens in figma, login and sign up at the top followed by the landing page to message sent flow.

⭐️Final features

📱Step 4 | Prototype

I created a prototype in Figma to understand and demonstrate the experience a user would have with my app. This would be used for user testing as well.

👥Step 5 | Usability Tests, followup interviews

I conducted usability tests with 3 farmers I previously spoke to to discover which parts of the app were effective and which needed improvements.

I conducted remote moderated tests via zoom, where farmers walked me through their thought process and impressions while completed predetermined tests.

❓Goals for usability tests

The goal was to understand the famers impression of the app and if my target audience believed it was clean, efficient and effective. Onboarding, finding users and sending messages were essential to the app and had to be tested for clarity.

• Go through the sign up flow, speak out loud about your impressions

• Use the search bar to search by keyword. Is the result what you expected?

• Find a users profile and send a message. Describe your experience doing so.

📊Conducting the usability tests

I began each test by asking for consent, welcoming the tester and thanking them for participating. I assured them that there were no incorrect answers and I was testing the app and not them.

I had users complete tasks while I took notes and after the interview asked them to complete a survey rating their experience I thanked them for their time and closed the session after the interview and survey.

🥳User testing results and conclusions

After my user tests I reviewed my notes and results. All 3 farmers were able to navigate the app and go through each flow successfully however each identified an element that needed adjusting.

💬 2 /3 participants said they thought the send a message flow was too lengthy, They expected recording ,stopping and sending to be on one screen .

💬 3/3 Users said they expected more photos of members farms and the option to add them. They also noted that adding a user photo was not included in the onboarding flow.

💬 3/3 Users said the app was effective and that “find a farmer includes the only the most necessary functions for video messaging and is straight to the point”

💬 3/3 Farmers appreciated the ways the app promotes conversations. “The question for the community was a clever way to invite others to reach out to you, and a comfortable way to create conversations with others”

💬 1 participant noted that the green color in find a farmer could be darkened for higher contrast and better visibility.

Conclusions

⭐️ Learnings

This project was incredibly rewarding to work on because the users true problem was not easily unearthed. 

The success after multiple iterations and user interviews and tests exemplified the rationale behind user centered design methods. Keeping the user at the forefront of the problem helped eliminate unnecessary elements, and clarified research questions. 

This allowed for thoughtful research synthesis which proved that the original hypothesis that farmers were looking for ways to interact with their customers more, was incorrect.

🛠 improvements to make

• Update onboarding with options to add profile photo

• Add more visual feedback for users during the message send flow