growtogether
Marginalized communities around the United States suffer from food insecurity, by implementing more community gardens around the cities marginalized communities are able to access nutritious foods.
Overview
Community Gardens are hard to start because there are multiple forms and permits that need to be filled-out. With this website community members who want to start a community garden will be able to access all the documents required by the twin-cities to start a community garden.
Key deliverables
MY ROLE
UI/UX Designer | UX Researcher | Participant interview and Directed Storytelling Moderator and Note Taker
METHODS
Competitive Analysis | Primary and Secondary Research | Recruitment of Users | Stakeholder Interviews | Heuristic Analysis | Usability Testing | Directed Storytelling | Static Wireframing | Prototyping
TOOLS
Figma | Zoom | Microsoft Excel | Powerpoint | Google forms
Summary
Key Points
Problem: Community Gardens are hard to start because there are multiple forms and permits that need to be filled out. With this website community members who want to start a community garden will be able to access all the documents required by the twin cities to start a community garden.
Process: Primary and Secondary research was done to learn how to start a community garden. Directed storytelling and stakeholder interviews were done to learn more about what users would expect from a website that would show them how to start their own garden.
Findings: Through primary/ secondary research, and directed storytelling from stakeholders, I learned the best way to implement starting a garden and learned how to make the website accessible to everyone.
Solution: Creating a website with downloadable PDFs that are also able to be filled out and printed facilitates the starting of a community garden.
Research process
Problem Statement
My research was based in Baltimore, where Johns Hopkins is located. Baltimore is considered a food desert, and people aren’t able to access nutritious foods. Due to that, people end up developing chronic diseases like Diabetes and Cancer as a result. I used the research I learned during my internship and expanded on it to create GrowTogether. Through research, I found different ways cities have approached food insecurity. One of the ways has been through community gardens. The tricky part about starting community gardens is that there are so many steps and paperwork that need to be filled out that it becomes overwhelming very fast.
The users consisted of people who...
Are local activists
People who go to Community Gardens
People who Volunteer at Community Gardens
Second Harvest Heart Land Director
People who have started their own garden at their home
USers
development process
Comparative Analysis
Secondary Research
Primary Research
Recruitment of users
Heuristic analysis
Affinity Diagraming
3.
Stakeholder Interviews
Directed Storytelling
Usability Testing
4.
Development of Prototype
Sketching
Low-Fidelity Wireframing
Prototyping
Understanding the Landscape
Comparative analysis
Secondary Research
Through competitive analysis I found websites with similar goals as Growtogether that showed a clear and concise way of explaining to people how to start a community garden without feeling overwhelmed
The websites did a good job with …
Educating people about how common food insecurity is in urban areas
Making it easy for users to get involved in Community Building
Making the website accessible
Through research, I learned the importance about community gardens and their benefits
Increase nutrition of the communities
Physical activity
strengthening communities among residents who are an active part of these gardens
Food insecurity has been associated with lower physical, mental, and social health. It has also been linked to an increase in health problems such as obesity and diabetes.
What forms do residents from Minneapolis and Saint Paul have to fill out in order to start a community garden
Directed Storytelling & Stakeholder Interviews
Findings from Directed Storytelling
“I think overall, the app needs to be simple and easy to understand, to make it accessible to the most people possible.”
During research, I talked to members of the community that included stakeholders, people who go to community gardens to get groceries, and members who volunteer at community gardens. I learned about other nonprofit companies that have the same values as GrowTogether of providing marginalized communities with healthier more nutritious foods.
Like Tamales y Bicicletas that is dedicated to strengthening the Latino and immigrant communities in the twin cities through bike projects, green farming, cultural empowerment, and environmental justice.
Users also mentioned that by highlighting other nonprofits on my website people interested in starting a community garden would be able to learn and grow from each other.
Users also mentioned that starting a garden is overwhelming
and wanted easy instructions to follow
solution
Creating the solution
Design
Deliverables
When I was doing research I read about community gardens that sell part of their produce to local restaurants in order to make a revenue and I would like to continue to do research and talk to people to see if that has been done in Minnesota and what the steps are to accomplish that.
Next Steps
The design of GrowTogether had to be simple and informative as possible. Users mentioned that starting a community garden is overwhelming due to all the paperwork and things that must be coordinated.
With that in mind while sketching I tried to keep the design as intuitive as possible
I also made sure to make the tabs easy to navigate
When Designing the final product in Figma there were a couple of things I wanted to add that were suggested by the users I interviewed
By adding editable worksheets to the site, users would be able to easily edit and share the resources with their community members.
Users mentioned that the trouble with community gardens is that a lot of people don’t know about them or how to get there. Due to that, I decided to add a map to make getting to community gardens easy and accessible.
I added different routes people could use to get to their local community garden.
Users mentioned that it is important to learn from other places that have similar values as GrowTogether and I made sure to integrate other nonprofits to meet that need.
