Imagining an engaging way to interact with and support local farmers, while enhancing access to nutrient rich foods.
Summary
Impact
During a 24-hour design competition, my team of three ideated, designed, and pitched this concept in response to the given prompt. Our designs were chosen as finalists and we were given the opportunity to present at the competition.
After placing 1st at the UX design competition, we were approached by an investor who was interested in helping us turn our mockups into a start-up. We further developed our product and business model, and entered pitch competitions for funding. Ultimately, we graduated from college and put the idea on the back-burner (for now).
The Context
CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, is a program where community members can order produce and boxes from their local farms. Produce boxes ordered directly from farms:
- increase profit margins for farmers
- provie more substantial nutrients than store-bought produce
- support the local community
CSA Programs are beneficial to everyone involved, but they're inaccessible to most people, with marketing only through word of mouth and the barrier to sign up for the program very high.
Recognizing a gap in the market, we identified our key problem:
Customers struggle to find CSA online storefronts, while farmers lack the resources and expertise to create them.
Understanding the Problem
Consumer Problem
The current process of discovering and joining a CSA program is unorganized, inefficient, and confusing.
There is only one site with consolidated CSA program information. However, the browser uses an outdated interface that does not link to any direct order forums or farms themselves.
Users must gather their own information by visiting each farm website individually to compare offerings. This causes users to feel committed to one option – if they can even figure out how to order produce.
Farmer Problem
How many farmers do you know that double as web developers?
It's clear why CSAs are so hard to find: farmers lack the time, money and expertise needed to build an integrated online CSA storefront
– and they're losing business because of it.
Key Pain Points
After just a quick scroll through the current Resy experience, we found ourselves frustrated and confused. We identified a few key pain points that we wanted to address in our solution design.
- Lack of tailored results
- Low information transparency
- Inaccessible navigation
- Cluttered profile page
Opportunity
Through user interviews, analyzing data from existing websites, and speaking with farmers, we were able to understand the scope of the problem, and where a solution might be the most impactful.
“Nutritional value is higher with CSA because foods are picked at the peak of harvest and aren’t held on shelves.”
– Trish Moller, Registered Dietician at USDA
20,000
daily visits to Local Harvest website.
This tells us that people are actively searching for a solution.
“I love our CSA box, but comparing what farms offered the program was a pain.”
– Dr. Mastrangelo, CSA User
“I always struggle with finding a restaurant … I like how other platforms use order history and favorites to recommend restaurants”
Tech-Confident Consultant
“Resy lacks personalization features … it should be able to quickly determine where I want to go based on previous bookings”
Resy Power-User
“It would be nice if I could put my allergies, which are more than just preferences, and have them expedited to restaurants”
Allergy-Wary Designer
Identifying a Solution
So, how do we help CSA users make informed buying decisions, while allowing farmers to market their products?
BountyBox is a farm aggregator where users can shop from multiple vendors at once. Farms can manage their profiles and storefronts directly in-app.
The platform streamlines community access to locally grown produce while simplifying the process for farmers.
Educational Onboarding
Our onboarding flow invites users to explore a new service through:
- Provides helpful context
- Simple, short onboarding
- Alternative language options
Shop by Product
- Recommendations based on past orders and location
- Offers filtering abilities
- Check out from multiple vendors at once
Shop by Farm
Our new profile page lets users find their reservations, hit list, notifications, dining preferences, and settings all in one place.
- Users can view past and future reservations
- View and edit Hit List of want-to-try spots
- Notifications, settings, and dining preferences
Arjun
2nd Year Symbolic Systems Student, Stanford University
- Feels overwhelmed by LinkedIn
- Unsure of his career path; wants to meet people with similar interests to discover different post-grad careers
- Made a group chat for students in his major, but they didn't have everyone's phone numbers
- Too many channels in which his professors and classmates communicate, formally & informally
Serene
3rd Year Human Bio. & Society Student, UCLA
- Uses LinkedIn to reach out to alumni from her school; some alumni don’t want to be contacted
- Wants to meet alumni in her field who are excited to mentor her
- Too many connection requests from classmates she doesn’t know and that aren’t in her field of study
- How can she connect with more relevant students from UCLA?
Branding
After finishing the pitch competition, and spending months focusing solely on what the business would mean, I spent some extra time brainstorming what the brand could look and feel like.
Using Figma, I iterated hundreds of names, logos, and icons. I challenged myself to make produce icons using only 2D, basic shapes.
Home Page
Here's why this page works:
- Nod to comfortable design systems
- Clear tags to classify alumni
- Focus on important events
Account Page
Here's why this page works:
- Saved content easily accessible
- Page for personal organization
- Quick links to other pages
Final Thoughts
Embedded Prototype
Final Branding
Final Thoughts
Embedded Prototype
The next step is to implement these branding guidelines into the interface we had designed months prior. Since graduating, our team decided to put this project on hold (for now), but it was an transformative learning exercise in understanding what it takes to develop a business and product.
