top of page
Growers Collective Mockup Checkout Screen.png

GROWERS
COLLECTIVE

UX Design

University of Wisconsin-Stout

This aggregate shopping app is entirely ethically sourced and organic foods, either from local or regional small businesses and farms. With the opportunity to support ethically all year round in addition to seeing each entities story, users can interact and invest in equitable harvest.

Complete Process Book:

images.png

Project Roadmap

RESEARCH

  • Overview

  • Competitive Analysis

  • User Interviews

  • User Personas

  • Red Routes

PROTOTYPING

  • AI Map

  • Lo-Fi Prototype

  • Test Plan

  • Lo-Fi User Testing

  • Affinity Map

DESIGN

  • Mood Board

  • Naming Ideation

  • Logo/Branding

  • Wireframes

  • Hi-Fi Prototype

USABILITY

  • Hi-Fi User Testing

  • Affinity Map

  • Limitations

  • Reflection

RESEARCH

Overview

Reseach

Why?

In the Midwest climate inhibits supporting locally and ethically via farmers markets year round. Shopping for organics through large corporations during off seasons, limits selection and well as diverts the support to sourced small and local entities.

Who?

This app aims to provide those in cold-climate states and or limited accessibility locations, with ethical, sustainable, and accessible produce and food products directly from select brands and local farms and global farms of choice.

Competitive Analysis

Misfits Market

PROS

  • Ability to shop and browse before order window opens

  • Large selection of products

  • Shares a tidbit about brand mission with each product

  • Can choose delivery date and manage future orders ahead of time

​

CONS

  • Automatically purchases if items in your cart total above $30 before your next delivery date

  • The lack of a like or add to list button

  • Inability to pause subscription indefinitely and instead automatically resumes after a period of 1-3 months time.

Thrive Market

PROS

  • User can choose tailored values/causes/impacts to pair down selection

  • Not just organic foods but also organic beauty and living products

  • Brand Transparency regarding brand mission

  • Diet and recipe sections

​

CONS

  • Requires a monthly subscription regardless of a monthly purchase

  • No fresh produce

  • Unable to review app further without subscription

Imperfect Foods

PROS

  • Welcome survey to get to know the user

  • Tracks food, water, and CO2e saved

  • Concise Interface

  • Market nice preventing waste of unappealing produce

​​

CONS

  • Unable to change assigned delivery date.

  • Small shopping window of 24-48 hours prior to delivery date.

  • Limited selection.

  • Locked browsing view, where a new customer is restricted browsing inventory for knowledge of product base.

Baseline Interview Questions

  • Where do you prefer to shop for groceries and why?​

  • Would you rather shop locally or at large corporations? (Ex. farmers markets and small businesses or Walmart, Target, Costco etc.)

  • Dose a product quantity matter to you? Do you buy in bulk?

  • What information do you want to know about your product that you are buying? What are your values as a consumer?

  • ​Do you write down a grocery list? If yes, is it written on paper or mobile device? Do you create a grocery list based on a recipe?

  • Do you use recipes on grocery apps?

  • How do you feel about subscription-based shopping apps?

  • Do you want to know if a product is good for the environment? Would you want an app tailored towards a specific cause?

  • When was a time that you were frustrated about your shopping experience on an app?

  • Are you a person who shops on a specific day of the week, every week?

  • Do you like living products as well as grocery products within a store?

Interview Results

Red Routes

User Personas & Stories:

PROTOTYPING

Information Architecture

Prototyping

Lo-fi Prototype

Lo-fi Usability Testing

Facilitator Guidelines

  • Phrase tasks to not influence or prime the user’s process

  • Ask participants to read the task instructions out loud

  • Major observation and minor probing questions. Count to 10 before asking

  • Ask users to think out loud

  • Do not interrupt or offer assistance

  • Inquire without leading and respond without stifling

  • Analyze findings and convert them into redesigns

Testing Techniques

  • Echo: repeat incoherent responses to prompt user explanation

  • Boomerang: deflect user questions by asking them a question ex. “What do you think?” or “What would you try?”

  • Columbo: ask partial questions, only the part that feels safe to say ex. “You swiped here...”

*View complete process book for testing experiences

User Testing Affinity Map

Summary/ Changes Implemented

  • Having a consistent search bar accessibility on every page and an icon for the “Shop” page that is a magnifying glass, which represents searching, was confusing and redundant to some users. My plan of action is to simplify the searching functionality.​

​​

  • Additionally the “Shop” page categories were desired by many to be on the home page. This included shopping “By Farm” which, seemed hidden, especially if that is the main draw to the app. My plan of action is to put shopping by farms as a main page in the navigation panel.​​​

  • Accessing messages was impossible for all users. The bell/notification icon was not interpreted as messages. My plan of action is to change it to a text bubble icon.

​​

  • I discovered that I needed to pair down what my app was about, and what I wanted to target to help my users reach their top priorities. This is shopping via small or local farms year round. My plan of action is to eliminate the aggregate feature of shopping for foods by outsourced brands.

DESIGN

Mood Board and Naming Ideation

Design

Wireframe

Mobile App Flows

USABILITY

Hi-fi Usability Testing

USABILITY

Scenarios

1. Let’s say you planned to make green smoothies for you and your friends and needed to select and purchase an assortment of produce for it? Show me how you might go about selecting your product and completing an order.

​

2. Imagine you were planning a dinner party and wanted to see the different options and prices of various farms produce in one place. Try to create a new wish list.

 

3. Pretend that you are especially concerned with the types of chemicals and pesticides used on your produce. Attempt to message a farm to ask about their practices.

Limitations

  • The Timeline:

Due to the very nature of a sequenced assignment and project timeline, I created an app that was within my means. This meant honing in on my app’s main purpose, shopping accessibility to ethical small and local farms. I eliminated the aggregate feature of shopping for foods from outsourced brands.

​

  • Software

Certain features were unattainable due to Xd’s limited functionality. There is no feature to add a component to a preexisting page as in an “add to cart” capability. I limited purchasing options to a single option that satisfied the tested scenario because users can only access a new preloaded cart screen through one route and can’t leave the page to add additional items.

Reflection

Through lo-fi usability tests I uncovered alterations I needed to do to my design and was able to test those changes with my hi-fi prototype. The response here was a richer, clearer app functionality. After Hi-fi testing I was able to make further changes, which include making the messaging button more prominent on farm profiles, add food categories to the discover page, and a list created indicator pop-up.

​

Through research, testing, ideation and recycling through those steps, I was able to create an app that met the grocerying needs of a group of individuals while practicing industry standard UX.

​

bottom of page