I worked as a UX/UI designer (contractor) for Fresh Food Connect for a 4-week period in November 2022. I spearheaded the project from proposing the research strategy to designing the prototype.
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Role: Sole UX/UI Designer (Contractor)
Time Frame: Oct - Nov 2022 (4 weeks)
Methods: Customer Journey Map • Value Proposition Canvas • User Interviews • User Flows • Sketches • Prototype
Tools: Figma • Mural Board • Canva

Summary

Background

Fresh Food Connect (FFC) is a non-profit based in Denver, CO with a mission of reducing food insecurity - an issue that affects 1 in 10 American households. FFC provides a mobile app that helps gardeners donate homegrown produce to local hunger relief organizations. Connecting gardeners with their community reduces food waste, while creating a more resilient and local food system.

Problem

Fresh Food Connect wanted to address the following challenge:

How might we improve a gardener's experience of donating their homegrown produce?

FFC wanted to improve the mobile app's donation process to increase donation completion rates and user return rates. Since they recently completed a redesign of the onboarding process, we focused on improving the donation drop-off scheduling process.

Empathize: What do gardeners want?

I conducted three 30-minute interviews with gardeners to understand what might motivate them to use an app to donate their homegrown produce. All three gardeners were enthusiastic about the idea of using an app to donate and identified the following as most motivating to their experience:

Help users save time - make donating convenient and effortless around busy work schedules
Highlight the impact of donations - give users a sense of fulfillment and appreciation

Define: What is the problem?

I created a customer journey map to identify areas for improvement in the current process. Moments with decreasing satisfaction were noted as opportunities for improvement.

I also wanted to understand, how can the process better create value for the user? I created a value proposition canvas to articulate user gains, pains and customer jobs and to understand features that could possibly add value as gain creators, pain relievers, or products/services.

Here is an example of how the VPC was used to understand customer gains, and how the product's growth could integrate "Gain creators":

Ideate

Gardeners indicated that they valued a time-saving donation process that can fit their busy schedules. However, in the existing app's user flow, the process showed the drop-off times at the end, even after gardeners added donation details. I proposed an update to the user flow by moving up the decision point, "Is there a time that works for you," to the beginning of the donation process.

Moving this decision point to the beginning of the user flow reduces frustrations by allowing a gardener to identify a time before inputing donation details:

I created multiple sketches to brainstorm potential design solutions. After meeting with the leadership team and deciding on a favorite design, I created a sketch prototype for each page and gathered a second round of feedback.

Prototype

This redesign achieves the following improvements:

Reduces the number of screens to complete donations from 3 to 1, simplifying the user flow and increasing transparency of the steps
Incorporates repeatability of donation details, improving backend data collection and management
Integrates community statistics to show community effort and achievements

Here are a few example screens from the hi-fi prototype created in Figma. See the full prototype:

Final Reflections

This project used methods such as the Customer Journey Map and the Value Proposition Canvas to empathize with users to define problems. I appreciate the value of using these tools in aligning marketing, customer success, and product teams, and will continue using these approaches to advocate for user-centered improvements. We decided that the next step in the redesign project will be to conduct usability tests, projected to being in Spring 2023.

Fresh Food Connect