[ PROJECT OVERVIEW ]
The Product : The Farm & Design is helping young farmer and freelance designer. This service is targeting young farmers who want to improve their company using design, and freelance designers who needs a job/client. This service becomes a bridge for both of them, each finding a designer and a client.
The Problem : Young farmers looking for designers. However they don’t know how to find. Also, they do not have high budget for designers. Freelance designers always looking for a job/client. However, it is difficult to find a job due to lack of client portals.
The goal : Young farmers will use this service and find the best designer that fits their need. They pay the rest of the bill with their own products, such as fruits and vegetables. Freelance designer will find a job/client and receive money and farmed products.
[ UNDERSTANDING THE USERS ]
User Research Summary : The young generation of farmers started rebranding their own companies. They have a lot of knowledge about agriculture. However, most of them did not know about design. When I research the job searching services, I did not find a finding freelance designer focusing on the agriculture field. On the other hand, farmers often do not have enough budget, which makes them difficult to rebrand by hiring designers. Marriage, giving birth and other big life events sometimes forces you to become a freelancer. However, even with a strong design skill, you can’t get money without finding a client.
Persona 01: Mari Yamamoto
Mari Yamamoto is a busy working woman and a mother who needs to find a web designer quickly and easily because she has lots of things to do at work and in private.
Persona 02 : Akane Shimizu
Akane Shimizu is a young freelance web designer who is looking for a client and a job because she doesn't have much freelancer experience.
Ideation
I did a quick ideation exercise to come up with ideas for how to set up an account and find a designer easily.
[ STARTING THE DESIGN ]
Paper wireframes
Digital Wireframes
After ideating and drafting some paper wireframe, I created farmer’s user flow. This shows from “create account” to “send order”.
Low-fidelity Prototype
To prepare for a usability test, I created a low-fidelity prototype that connected a farmer’s user flow to make an order to a designer.
[ REFINING THE DESIGN ]
High-fidelity Prototype
The high-fidelity prototype followed the same user flow as the low-fidelity prototype, including design changes made after the usability test.
Mobile App / High-fidelity
Mobile App / High-fidelity
[ RESPONSIVE DESIGN ]
Responsive Website Sitemap
My goal is to make a simple user flow and create less confusion for users. Sometimes too many options give users too much information, which can overwhelm them. This time I put the search button on its own account page.
Responsive Design
To take the benefit of easy legibility and big photos on desktop computers, the website is designed to transform to bigger image sizes when the screen size becomes larger.
[ GOING FORWARD ]
Impact : Farmers want to use their products for money. Also, designers are willing to receive both money and farmer’s product. The important thing is to not make the payment lower while keeping design values higher. Fresh farmed products have values that designers appreciate. This is a win-win situation.
What I learned: It turns out that narrowing down the target creates a unique service, rather than making a general service that can cover a larger number of people. And when you look back at clear targets, you can see services people need and don't need.
