Garden Goods
Harvest the Benefits: Connect, Trade, Grow
Overview
Problem
Many individuals love gardening as a hobby and growing their own produce, but when it comes to harvesting their fruits and/or veggies, they realize they have more produce than they can consume before spoiling.
Solution
Garden Goods is an app that helps connect backyard gardeners in order to form a safe community where they can easily trade or sell their goods without having to go through the hassle of joining a farmers market.
My Role
UX researcher and UI Designer on a 3 person team
Scope
5 weeks - 70+ hours
Empathize - Exploring the User’s Needs
Research Approach
To better understand the pain points for an average gardener we decided to first conduct interviews. This qualitative research provided valuable data that informed our decision-making throughout the design process.
Interviews
We conducted interviews with five backyard gardeners, both in person and over the phone, to understand their needs for a garden goods trading app. Our findings revealed that although most gardeners were eager to avoid wasting their surplus produce, they faced challenges in effectively utilizing it. Although these interviews yielded valuable insights, we determined that the sample size of five participants was insufficient to draw comprehensive conclusions about the broader gardening community's needs and behaviors.
Surveys
To gather more comprehensive quantitative data, we developed and distributed a Google survey. The survey aimed to assess gardeners' current methods of managing excess produce while simultaneously gauging non-gardeners' interest in produce exchange opportunities. Key findings revealed that approximately half of respondents dispose of surplus produce, while the remainder distribute it to others. Notably, more than 50% of survey participants expressed willingness to utilize a produce exchange application, indicating potential market viability for this solution.
Define - Identify the User’s Needs and Problems
Persona Development
Our research identified two prevalent challenges among gardeners: managing surplus produce waste and seeking meaningful connections within the gardening community. To effectively address these distinct user needs, we developed two representative personas. The first persona, Ryan Green, embodies the novice gardener—a college student eager to develop his horticultural skills through community engagement and mentorship. Our second persona, Suzie Collins, represents the experienced gardener who takes pride in cultivating and preparing homegrown produce for loved ones. Despite her expertise, Suzie faces mounting frustration with the limitations of her current harvest variety and increasingly struggles with produce management, resulting in unnecessary waste.
Journey Mapping
Using the insights we gathered from our research and wanting to explore how a user might interact with the Garden Goods app we decided to create a user journey for our persona A, Ryan Green. This process led to several key feature recommendations, including location-based services to facilitate proximity-based trading and an integrated messaging system enabling users to coordinate exchanges efficiently. These features were specifically designed to enhance user engagement and streamline the produce trading process.
Problem Statement
Using the insights gathered from our research, we concentrated on crafting a "How Might We" problem statement. After some time we were able to solidify one that we all felt embodied the problem we wanted to solve.
“How might we build a service for backyard gardeners in order to share and preserve produce, reduce waste and foster neighborhood connections?”
Ideate - Laying the Groundwork
SWOT Analysis
While beginning to ideate we wanted to find ways that we could stand out from our competitors and see what potential insights we could glean from them. While we couldn’t find any active applications with the exact same idea as us we were able to find a similar competitor: Facebook Marketplace. Through a comprehensive SWOT analysis of Facebook Marketplace, we uncovered key opportunities for differentiation. These included our specialized focus on gardening and our commitment to creating an intuitive, user-friendly interface that aligns with platforms our target users already understand and trust.
Feature Prioritization Matrix
We then created a feature prioritization matrix in order to identify what features were a necessity to include in our final design, and which ones we believed our users could live without. Must have features included things like geolocation, messaging features, and ability to follow users to keep up with their posts. Not only did this allow us to hone in on key features, it also allowed us to think about what we could potentially implement in the future.
User Flow
Our next and final step before prototyping was to create a user flow. We decided our user flow would focus on going through the apps feed with the options of creating a post or messaging a user. While we were wary of our user flow being to broad we still decided to go with it because we felt all of the possible paths worked together and would help us create a comprehensive prototype.
Prototype - Crafting Soulutions
Wireframes
To start of prototyping we created gray-scale wireframes of the Garden Goods app. These wireframes consisted of 19 frames that thoroughly explored our user flow and its multiple paths.
Prototype
After conducting a few user tests we began creating a high fidelity version of our wireframes with the intention of the finished product being a clickable prototype. Although it took 2 separate iterations of high fidelity frames we finally ended up with our full color prototype.
Testing - Validating the Solution
User Testing Plan
We conducted 6 individual tests of our prototype in order to identify if users could complete multiple key tasks and objectives.
Objectives
Can users navigate the feed without getting lost or confused
Can users navigate messaging, trade, and buy features easily
Are users able to make a post
Tasks
Review the feed
Make a post
Navigate to messages
Offer a trade
Feedback
While users found most of our prototype straight forward and easy to navigate a few had trouble with specific tasks. Some users felt it was difficult to identify the designated button for posting and suggested we put text above the button saying “post”. Another issue users had was the messaging screen. Some users felt it was too cluttered and somewhat confusing for a first time user. The options to purchase or trade right when opening the message screen was confusing since we hadn’t implemented a way to purchase produce in the app, meaning the purchase button would just lead back to the normal messaging screen.
Revisions and Next Steps
Our revisions addressed issues identified during user testing. We implemented user suggestions by adding the label “Post” above the plus icon button and repositioning the purchase button to prompt users about buying or trading before initiating messaging. Although additional improvements were considered, time constraints necessitated moving forward with the project. While we are pleased with the final prototype, our user surveys revealed strong interest in further enhancements. Notably, respondents expressed enthusiasm for a forum page where users could share tips, tricks, and general gardening information, as well as a food recipes section to encourage trade around specific culinary ideas. We look forward to exploring these additions in future iterations.
Reflections & Key Takeaways
Unlike previous projects where I worked within existing designs, this project challenged me to build an application entirely from scratch. Rather than refining an existing webpage or app, we had to create a solution from the ground up—one that gardeners would find genuinely useful. This required deep empathy for our users and a design process driven entirely by their needs.
One of the most valuable lessons from this experience was the importance of user testing and research. Conducting surveys, gathering feedback, and creating user personas played a pivotal role in shaping both the functionality and visual design of our final prototype. Every design decision was guided by real user insights, reinforcing just how critical research is to crafting a seamless user experience.
This project ultimately reinforced a key takeaway: user research is the unsung hero of UX design. By prioritizing the user’s perspective from the very beginning, we were able to create a product that was not only functional but truly aligned with the needs of its audience. This experience has deepened my appreciation for human-centered design and strengthened my ability to craft meaningful digital experiences.