I spent 16 weeks with IdeateLabs designing a digital solution to help solve challenges that small, organic vegetable farms in Japan face. This page showcases the design process I utilized in solving this problem.
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The Problem
The Problem
Japan's organic vegetable farmers are struggling to maintain important and traditional sources of Japanese food culture. Local farms provide community, economic viability, and purpose for rural Japanese people. The common thread of this struggle for organic vegetable farmers is making a profit. NearFar (Near Farms), my design project, aimed to help farmers become more profitable while aestheticizing farming so younger generations take an interest.
Other challenges range from pests to the age of the farmers. Pests, such as monkeys and wild boars, are a problem since no permanent solution to deal with these intelligent animals that eat the produce exists. Farmers are well into their older years and can't work for as many hours as they used to. Young farmers don't want to work from 4 AM late into the evening which is the typical schedule of a Japanese organic vegetable farmer. If young farmers do not replace the farmers, then traditional Japanese food culture will be largely lost and older farmers will sell their land. The land will become uncultivated and overgrown.
Why this project?
Why this project?
From 2016 to 2020, I was a student at Temple University studying Asian studies and public health. I developed an interest in food culture and agriculture. I regularly watched a show on national Japanese television (NHK) called Trails to Tsukiji, now Trails to Oishii Tokyo, and this show followed individual ingredients from the farms to the marketplace. Often, ingredients in the food I loved had completely different origins than I expected. Take a look here at some of the episodes of Trails to Oishii Tokyo.
In 2021, when I was accepted into a competitive English teaching program called the JET program, I was placed in Kagoshima Prefecture, one of the top three prefectures with the highest amount of agricultural production and output in Japan. Some of the crops grown here include rice, green tea, sweet potatoes, daikon radish, and as for animal products, black wagyu, unagi, and beef are produced the most in Kagoshima than in any other prefecture in Japan.
I eat a mostly vegetarian diet so I was interested in learning more about Japanese vegetable farmers. Other than my basic knowledge of vegetables from grocery shopping and watching NHK, I don't know much about vegetable farming. I would say I know more about farm animals since a few family members in my home state of New Hampshire raise sheep, pigs, and cows for consumption and competition. Nevertheless, it is with this beginner's mindset that I tried to start this project 🥬 👩🌾
What is User Experience Design?
What is User Experience Design?
User Experience can be shortened to UX and is sometimes referred to as UX/UI.
User Experience design is a process that connects users' feelings with users' needs.
UX designers are sometimes involved in the entire process of creating and implementing the use of a design. This includes research, branding, marketing, and promotion.
User Experience designers are concerned with designing products that fit the needs of the intended users in the intended environment.
In conclusion, User Experience designers create enjoyable, efficient, intuitive, and useful products for people who need the tools. Source: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/ux-design
Design Phases and Timeline
Design Phases and Timeline
Start Date: February 21st, 2022
End Date: May 2022
Primary Research: February 21st - February 27th
Deciding a project topic, researching with available resources online, developing a working hypothesis
Secondary Research: February 28th - March 6th
Primary research (Interviews - 5 people)
Ideate: March 7th - March 13th
Interview Synthesis, more primary research (more interviews), affinity mapping, and brainstorming possible solutions
Prototype:
Create your MVP and MLP (minimum lovable product). It's not enough to show that your product works, you have to make it attractive to users from the start.
Test and Evaluate:
Test the MVP/MLP on users and collect feedback.
Reiterate as Needed and Evaluate:
Perfection, whether or not it exists in the world, does not exist in UX. There are always changes that can be made and ways we can make a design better.
Research (User Interviews)
Research (User Interviews)
I interviewed 9 farmers for the user research phase. I also interviewed a Ph.D. agriculture student at Kagoshima University, several foreigner organic vegetable farmers, and an agriculture officer of the local government in Kagoshima. Some of the conversations took place in Japanese, and face-to-face, because thanks to an agriculture officer I met, I managed to visit a carrot farm, a garlic farm, a sweet potato/radish farm, and a local farm stand to interview farmers in person. I think this is a rare opportunity, and I transcribed all of the Japanese interviews myself. After each interview, I made note of the observations using Miro, and finally grouped together patterns and specific insights that applied to the entire group of farmers.
Through the interview process, I realized I needed to interview vegetable consumers as well. I had to solve for the farmer by researching the consumers something I was not entirely aware of until my mentor at Ideate Labs encouraged me to try.
I interviewed five consumers, but this was one error from my research phase. I should have spent more time interviewing consumers. I became so invested in the farmers that I thought my best plan of action was to understand their mindsets completely, when in fact, their worries were simple to understand. The consumer behavior was most difficult to influence and control so I might have benefited from researching this more thoroughly.
To the right, is a questionnaire I used to interview consumers remotely.
Insights from Farmer Interviews
Farmers are mainly worried about if they can sell enough vegetables to make a profit
Many farmers did not grow up thinking they were going to be farmers - they developed an interest in having more time for themselves and their families, developing a healthy lifestyle, and in specific Japanese organic farming practices.
Many farmers are worried about the amount of time they have to work, without any extra help, and this is one factor that turns off younger farmers.
Japanese farmers were more likely to sell to the school lunch center while no foreigner farmers sold to school lunch centers
Foreigner farmers were more likely to do Community Service Agriculture (CSA) although some farmers do not enjoy putting together the kits.
Many farmers realized that their farm would become an uncultivated plot when they retire from their farm - they don't necessarily have a successor for the farm.
Insights from Interviews (Consumer side)
Consumers are ages 30 to 50, educated with university degrees, married or living with family, and with an income of about 30,000 USD to 50,000 USD per year.
Ms. Y values freshness first and price second because she cares about taste and nutrition.
Ms. Y would ask a farmer “Where can I find the rest of your vegetables?” because she values freshness and doesn’t believe a CSA would arrive in time for fresh vegetables/she doesn’t think she can cook everything in the box before the vegetables go bad.
Mr. S was really excited about the opportunity to ask questions to a farmer and he’d ask how long the farmer works in a day (because he and his wife care about where the food comes from).
Mr. S needs to value price, primarily because he has a family to support.
E-san needs to use a cooking application because she's a housewife and cooks for her family.
E-san values nutrition and buying in-season because she has a family to keep healthy.
Emiko san needs to cook for her family but as for herself, she is interested in the effort and affection a farmer puts into his produce.Mika sometimes doesn’t know what to cook so she uses a recipe app and wants to buy vegetables that are appropriate for a recipe and good value.
Mika uses coupons, and points, and is always looking for a cheaper option. She keeps receipts and points for every store she visits.
Users are price-conscious, nutrition conscious, and also aware of the farmers' role in putting food on their plates. They'd like to cook delicious meals but sometimes don't have the time or knowledge of what to make.
Ideate (Generate ideas for the solution)
Ideate (Generate ideas for the solution)
IdeateLabs is a female-owned startup from Philadelphia that specializes in teaching UX/UI to minorities and women
In conversation with UX mentors and teachers, we ideated on possible ways to create a digital solution for farmers, a difficult group to solve. We used the Crazy Eights method multiple times and eventually realized that in order to solve for farmers, I needed to solve for their customers as well.
For about four weeks every Saturday morning, around 6 am, I navigated a 14-hour time difference to discuss the research I completed that week, as well as the insights I gathered from creating a customer journey map, user types, wireframes, and a user flow for my digital solution. I incorporated my mentor's advice into my design thinking and once I had some flow that was testable, I dived into Figma to create the prototype.
Test and Evaulate your design
Test and Evaulate your design
What I ended up creating was a walkthrough (Happy Path) of some semi-high-fidelity wireframes for my app, NearFar. NearFar would help consumers keep track of the farmers and the produce they purchase from local sources. It would be slightly gamified in the sense that the more you buy from local sources, the more points you receive, and this could accumulate to prizes or coupons in the future. I was inspired by the pleasurable experience MorningBrew delivers to users, as well as the Starbucks rewards app, so I attempted to design my wireframes and flow with those apps in mind, while still creating something uniquely my own.
Reiterate and Evaluate As Needed
Reiterate and Evaluate As Needed
Hidaka san, a carrot farmer, is someone I won't forget from this UX project.
After creating this walk-through of the app, I realized that I still didn't understand the consumers of produce in my area that well. Farmers needed more revenue streams, and creating an app that provides monetary value for the farmers, and some pleasurable experience for the consumer could have been the answer.
Unfortunately, I never updated NearFar because I moved away from the rural area where I was living into a big city. I went from seeing farmers every day to never seeing them. Now, when I go shopping, I have no clue who I am buying from, nor do I stop to think most of the time. City life is all-absorbing. I also moved into a situation where I do not cook my food most days. I became a dorm life teacher and most days, I eat what the kitchen gives me. But on my days off or during vacations, I still struggle with some of the pain points that my users (consumer side) would experience; the need to buy cheap items, while maintaining freshness, and also a need to know what to cook to optimize the taste.
Perhaps my experience of going from NearFar-mers to Far-from-farmers reenstates the need for an app like this. We need to form communities that value a sense of connection with those who grow the food that keeps us healthy. I'm sure many city dwellers would agree with me.
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