Forager App
Forager App
2024
Intro
Forager is a social app geared towards connecting recreational foragers with each other for the purposes of sharing knowledge and promoting sustainable practices. The app offers ways for people to connect with each other based on location or shared interest, as well as read up on the latest foraging topics and even keep field notes while out foraging.
The Challenge
Foraging is a fun way for sustainably-minded individuals to eat and be inspired by native plant species. However, many would-be foragers struggle to bridge the gap between reading about foraging, and actually getting out there to forage for themselves.
The Goal
Create a platform to encourage new, as well as seasoned foragers, to get out there and forage, share their knowledge and have fun in the process.
My Role
Sole UI/UX Designer and Researcher, with advice from my mentor Carl Miller
Research
Objectives
Identify foragers and potential foragers
pinpoint pain points associated with the foraging process/community
find solutions to increase earth-friendly foraging
Questions to Answer
What holds people back from foraging?
How are foragers currently learning/sharing information?
Why are people foraging?
Methodology
I began my research journey with a screener survey to target my potential user base. My goal was to target three types of potential users: potential foragers who faced some obstacle to actually getting out there to forage, occasional foragers with some baseline knowledge and experience, and experienced/professional foragers with insights on sustainable practices.
“Do you consider yourself a forager?”
“Which describes you best?”
User Interviews
Once a group of potential users was established via the screener survey, I conducted user interviews to better understand users’ needs and pain points in regards to foraging and the greater foraging community. I identified several common threads between the interviewees. The most notable pain points are illustrated in the following quotes from participants.
““One of the biggest things that hold people back is [the thought that] you’re consuming this stuff. What if it’s not actually safe?””
““If we had an ability to connect with other people who are also foraging, we could share knowledge… within our community””
““Really, when you go out there, you’re going to find so little that you’ll want to save seeds or spread spores. It’s really important that you are foraging sustainably, and that you’re not wiping an entire crop out every time you go. It can be really easy to do that when you only find like four mushrooms.””
““Learning the nuances of plant identification takes a lot of time. It’s really tough. For those starting out, if they don’t want to put a ton of work into it, or if they don’t have the time or the resources to do so, I could imagine those people getting very easily discouraged from wanting to go out on a casual foraging trip.””
Understanding Users & Their Goals
Affinity Maps
I organized the data from these interviews into an affinity map in order to group common themes.
Empathy Maps
Next, I created empathy maps to better understand the data I collected from doing interviews and began categorizing my potential users into a pre-persona format. Creating these empathy maps with the categories, Think, Do, Say, and Feel, allowed me to hone in on my potential users’ pain points with more accuracy and certainty. Based on my empathy maps, I can confidently say that most of my potential users feel a lack of community and would benefit from being able to more easily connect with other foragers.
Meet the Personas
The next step was to create the personas which would be my guide for the design of the resulting product. These personas followed the same basic format as the empathy maps, with three basic user types: the novice, the intermediate, and the advanced forager.
These personas allowed me to pinpoint user needs with specificity and simplify those needs more directly into a problem statement.
How might we connect local foragers while promoting an inclusive community based on sustainable foraging practices?
Early Ideation
With a deeper understanding of the users and their potential pain-points, I began brainstorming potential solutions.
In order to think more holistically regarding the organization and blueprint of the app, I created a site map. The site map allowed me to map out two critical user flows- the process a user goes through in order to connect with a fellow forager, and the process a user goes through when using the app to learn more about foraging in a specific region.
The next step was to translate the critical user flows into wireframes.
Moving into Higher Fidelity
Usability Testing
Two rounds of usability testing were conducted using an InVision Prototype. These rounds of testing were documented in a detailed usability testing report. Each round of testing uncovered 2-3 opportunities for improvement in the app and were implemented based on priority and feasibility.
The Result
Reflections
Overall, I am happy with the current version of this product. I think it effectively connects current and prospective foragers with the community they seek in order to connect more with nature and each other. With more time and iteration, I would have loved to continue building out and testing untouched features, as well as iterating on the visual identity system of the app itself.
Given that this was my first full UX Design project, I learned to truly appreciate the robustness of the iterative design process. I also gained a real appreciation for the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods employed throughout the design of this product. I look forward to honing in on these skills in my future work.