Produceble

Role: Product designer, product manager

Duration: 8 weeks

Deliverables: Research artifacts, hi-fi designs, pitch presentations

Background: ‭Produceble is a farm-to-table venture that was developed as part of an eco-startup program under the guidance of seasoned ESG professionals.

The problem

Sustainably-minded individuals have limited and inconsistent access to fresh, locally sourced produce of different varieties in Rhode Island, often having to manually search through multiple sources to piece together one week’s grocery list.

On the other hand, local producers have limited funds and human resources to sell directly to consumers and instead are forced to rely on middlemen who might not align with their interests.

This project bridges this gap by facilitating direct-to-consumer sales avenues for local products and providing consumers with a consolidated platform to search, browse, and buy local goods.

The people

To orient the team and the project, we began by conducting extensive exploratory interviews, first with subject-matter experts and then with consumers. This served as a foundation to map distinct customer segments and develop the corresponding user personas, Jordan and Susan. They represent the common delineating features of consumers we interviewed: urban vs. suburban, individual vs. family, and low-spending vs. high-spending.

However, they both share several key pain points in accessing local produce:

  1. Difficulty searching for local farmers and convenience of traditional grocery stores.

  2. Lack of flexibility for type and quantity of goods.

  3. Limited transportation or time to track down farm/farmers’ markets

Overall, the user interviews displayed a general consensus that buying locally takes too much effort.

Jordan Chen is a college student living with 3 other roommates in an urban area. To save money and be a little more sustainably-minded, he and his roommates pool together their money to get a subscription box from their local farm. They often find they get veggies they don’t know how to cook, or are otherwise underwhelming.

Susan Melech is a mother of two who works as an IT manager living in the suburbs. She tries her best to buy locally and frequents farmers’ markets when she can. She is willing to pay a premium for locally sourced food but finds it difficult to get enough variety of groceries for her family solely from local producers.

The Research

To identify how might we make it easier for consumers to buy locally, I first conducted a competitive analysis of existing grocery segments.

The most popular of the competitors all had one thing in common: product aggregation. That is, to display all offerings in a centralized location and have a streamlined check-out process. This observation coincides with insight from the earlier user interviews in which the fragmentation of local goods was a significant barrier to access.

This finding prompted several key questions to answer in exploratory designs:

  1. What is the minimal viable level of aggregation? Should we prioritize producer-led discovery or goods-led discovery?

  2. How do we display existing farm-ran subscription programs in conjunction with individual items?

  3. How to minimize friction between buying from multiple producers?

The Designs

Brainstorming

I began the design process by pulling together a small focus group of users for a facilitated brainstorming session. Together we brainstormed different features, wants, and needs, which we then synthesized with a card sort.

I presented the artifacts from this session and those of my previous research to the rest of the team. In doing so, I aligned with development and business priorities to define the following features for our MVP:

  1. Browsing platform with standard sort/filter functions

  2. Producer “storefront” with listing capabilities of both subscription-based purchases and one-off purchases

  3. Centralized cart and checkout flow

User Journey and Wireframes

I then mapped out the different user flows for browsing sellers, adding items to the cart, and checking out. Using this flow, I built out several different static prototypes for which I conducted informal user tests to test and validate my current flows. These sessions allowed me to more clearly identify edge cases and different ‘success’ pathways.

Styles and Fonts

Drawing from insights garnered through user interviews that underscored a strong emphasis on sustainability and user-friendliness, our visual branding is anchored in two key messages:

  1. Grocery shopping on this platform is shopping sustainably

  2. This is a modern and clean platform that is easy to use

To materialize these concepts, I conducted an analysis of comparable brands such as Misfit Market and Hello Fresh. This examination revealed a consistent use of refreshing greens, coupled with clean and straightforward fonts. This informed my selection of a core green palette (outlined below) with a range of versatile neutrals.

Furthermore, I decided to primarily use sans-serif font in order to center readability and highlight the emphasis on streamlined user experience.

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Browsing

The browsing experience for Produceble is central to the MVP. When opening the app, the user will land first on the Market page, showing them local farms organized by proximity. This page allows users to filter sellers’ prices, distances, food categories, and delivery options. To preserve accessibility, filter selection sub-menus are presented in a pop-up view towards the bottom of the screen. In addition, the browsing experience also includes a map view to allow users to explore farms visually, which has a lower tab that swipes up into the market view while preserving the area of search. This browsing flow follows similar precedents in that of well-established apps like Yelp or UberEats, thereby minimizing overall friction by allowing users to draw from familiar mental models.

Storefronts

Earlier interviews with local producers highlighted the need to account for both existing farm shares and individual goods. Since most farm shares operate on a multi-week or even multi-monthly basis and are more limited in number, I designed the page so that farm share boxes would be stickied to the top of the seller’s storefront. Selecting this item then takes the user to a separate page to note substitutions and pick share length and number. If the user is only interested in buying al a carte, users can select an item, taking them to a similar page where they can specify weight. This system allows users to glean a high-level overview of the sellers’s offerings while still being able to access critical details like length, substitutions, and weight.

Cart and Checkout

While the user browses different storefronts, they will maintain a central cart to store all their added items. Within the cart itself, items will first be divided by farm and then by individual products. In other words, there are no separate carts for separate farms. This decision was made on my initial research’s emphasis on aggregated checkout. Given most farms only specialize in select goods, users would otherwise have to select their veggies and check out, then their meats etc. This combined cart thus helps emulate more traditional shopping experiences and cuts user friction down significantly.

When the user is satisfied with their cart, they can then move on to the checkout process. A non-platform aspect of the MVP is the capability to source orders from farmers and store/deliver them as a whole, even if the order includes items from multiple farms. Thus, selecting pick-up or delivery is relatively straightforward, requiring the user only to add their address or select a pick-up address and select a time slot. Once the delivery method and time are confirmed, the order summary will reflect all the items, delivery times, and the final total. Upon placing the order, the user will get a brief notification before the checkout tab closes, returning the user to whatever page they were on before.

Final Key Screens

Reflections

Working on this project was both a daunting and an amazing experience, especially when it came to working agilely. We were a super small team, all working on different aspects of the venture. As such, I learned a lot about ownership over a project and how to communicate the value of my work to those of different backgrounds. This project also was a great exercise in not getting too attached to any ideas or work, since we kept having to pivot and scrap. I also learned some valuable skills in finding mentorship and have developed a great network from this project that I hope to keep moving forward!