Designing a Home Delivery Experience for Farmers' Market Enthusiasts
UX/UI Design • Service Design
Role
Service Designer, UX Researcher
Timeline
Mar - Apr 2023
Team
Jane Effanga, Yixuan Zhong
Tools
Figma, Miro, Procreate
01
Project Overview
Farm2You is a conceptual design project developed during my Experience Design Studio 1 course at Northeastern University, part of my Master’s in Experience Design program. This course emphasized enhancing home delivery systems by deeply understanding and improving human experiences, focusing on attention, goals, needs, and desires.
Recognizing the rising health consciousness and the growing movement to support local farmers and sustainable agriculture, my team selected the farmers' market as our intervention focus. Our objective was to design a home delivery experience that maintains the authenticity of the farmers' market while offering enhanced convenience for consumers.
CONTEXT
Key Data Points and Trends:
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Increasing health consciousness and desire for fresh, locally-sourced produce driving a surge in popularity of farmers' market.
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Modern consumers increasingly expect the convenience of home delivery for various goods.
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Small-scale farmers often lack the resources to provide home delivery services, limiting their ability to meet this demand.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly accelerated the adoption of online shopping and home delivery services.
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Farmers already travel specific routes from their farms to markets multiple times a week, representing a missed opportunity to leverage these routes for deliveries.
Problem Statement
Given that farmers often travel to farmers' markets each week, passing by potential customers on their routes, how can we leverage these existing routines and routes to create a convenient and accessible way for consumers to purchase fresh produce, while maintaining the authentic experience of shopping at a farmers' market?
02
SOLUTION OVERVIEW
Farm2You enables consumers to buy local produce directly and conveniently from farmers. Inspired by the ice cream truck model, farmers leverage their existing travel routes to make scheduled stops in neighborhoods for easy pickup. This platform preserves the farmers market experience by facilitating direct interactions between farmers and consumers, supporting local agriculture, and ensuring convenient access to fresh, locally sourced produce.
USER STORYBOARD
Melody is a busy foodie passionate about locally sourced produce. She loves trying new recipes and prefers buying directly from farmers at the farmer's market but her hectic schedule makes frequent visits challenging.
APP DEMO
DISCOVERY
Understanding the Challenge
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
Stakeholder mapping helped us identify and analyze the key individuals, organizations, and groups who have an interest or influence in the success of the project.
FIELD RESEARCH
We visited the farmer' market at Copley Square and conducted informal interviews with three farmers to gather their perspectives. We also interviewed consumers to learn about their motivations and preferences for buying locally-sourced produce.
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Farmers
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prioritize sustainable agriculture and direct consumer connections
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struggle to compete with larger producers and lack resources for home delivery.
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primarily sell through CSA programs and farmers' markets
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are interested in joining services to increase sales.
Consumers
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prioritize freshness and quality
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seek convenience and affordability
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value the authentic experience of selecting produce from farmers
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are open to alternative distribution methods for locally-sourced produce.
INSIGHT SYNTHESIS
Framing the Opportunity
AFFINITY MAPPING
To synthesize insights gathered from our field research. We leveraging fellow design students to brainstorm and organize different aspects and considerations associated with local produce.
The following themes emerged...
MORE FIELD RESEARCH
After identifying themes from the affinity mapping exercise, we visited the Boston Public Market to survey consumers about their preferences and priorities for purchasing locally-sourced produce. We asked them to rank their top 5 considerations when buying local produce.
The survey results indicated that price, farm scale and produce condition are top priorities for consumers when buying local produce. Interestingly, delivery and customer service were among the lowest priorities.
Instead of viewing this as a lack of need, we interpreted it as an opportunity to:
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Differentiate our service
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Emphasize the value of our service
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Ensure a seamless and satisfying user experience
IDEATION
Generating and Refining Ideas
SERVICE BLUEPRINT
We created a service blueprint to identify potential issues and improve the customer journey, which helped us align touch points between customers, farmers, and systems, and address pain points and inefficiencies in the end-to-end experience.
ROLE PLAYING
The role-playing exercises helped us simulate user scenarios and interactions to identify functional requirements and refine the service concept.
Some functional requirements that emerged from the roleplaying exercise include:
Customers should be able to:
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receive route announcement notifications
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view farm profiles and catalogs
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subscribe/unsubscribe to farms
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create/update their account details
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pre-order products
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create a shopping list
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track the status of the truck in real-time
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set alerts for when the truck is within a certain radius or time frame
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provide feedback on delivery service and status
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chat with the farm admin
Farmers should be able to:
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set up farm profile - catalogue, outlets, commute days and times
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check in and make trip announcements
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post and update product quantity and price
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track the truck in real time
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receive notifications for interested customers
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track progress - completed trips, remaining trips and ETA
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track inventory
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receive payments
USER FLOW
Creating a user flow diagram helped us identify the necessary screens for the Farm2You app and visualize the sequence of screens that a customer will encounter while navigating through the app.
EXPERIMENTATION
Key Design Decisions and High Fidelity Prototypes
1.
Community Features
Insight: Consumers value community engagement and transparency.
We added features for users to find neighbors, search recipes, and post updates. By connecting users with others who share their passion for supporting local agriculture, we aim to create a more engaging and rewarding experience for everyone.
2.
Farmers' Wait Time Countdown
Insight: Efficient time management is crucial for both farmers and consumers.
To optimize the delivery process, we added a wait time countdown for farmers at each stop. This allows farmers to manage their time more effectively and avoid waiting indefinitely, while also enabling consumers to plan their visits more efficiently and avoid missing out on their desired products.
3.
Pre-ordering Feature
Insight: Consumers want to ensure the availability of desired products, and farmers need to plan inventory.
The pre-ordering feature enables consumers to reserve items in advance, ensuring that the farmer has enough inventory to meet demand. This feature also benefits farmers by allowing them to better plan their inventory for each stop.
4.
Unique QR code for consumers:
Insight: Integrating online and offline activities can significantly enhance user convenience and operational efficiency.
Each consumer receives a unique QR code that facilitates seamless payment both online and offline, enables users to track their purchase history, integrates pre-ordering with in-person purchases, enhances security and transparency, and improves overall user experience by streamlining transactions and inventory management.
5.
Rating System
Insight: Gathering comprehensive feedback is essential for improving service quality and managing user experiences.
Implementing a rating system that allows users to rate their delivery experience, provide feedback on uncollected orders, and track overall satisfaction to ensure quality control and manage refunds if necessary.
04
PROJECT TAKEAWAYS
01
The Value of User Research and Engagement
We experienced first hand, the importance of user research. Initially, we assumed that farmers' market goers ideally would prefer the convenience of home delivery. However, user research revealed that while people appreciated the convenience, they valued the personal interactions with farmers a little more. This insight highlighted the necessity of validating assumptions through direct user engagement to ensure our designs truly reflect user needs and preferences.
02
The Benefit of Role-Playing
Role-playing proved invaluable in understanding the user experience from both consumer and farmer perspectives. By acting out these roles, we uncovered practical challenges and process hiccups that we hadn't initially considered. This method provided deeper insights into the user journey and allowed us to proactively address potential issues, underscoring the effectiveness of role-playing as a tool for refining design solutions.