Building communities by connecting local fishermen to local restaurants for a sea to plate experience.
Built with a team of four over a four week period.
Connecting people through lasting, meaningful relationships by enhancing current social media platforms
Built individually over a period of four weeks.
Using the farm to table method support the community and small business by connecting smaller commercial fishing companies with local restaurants to provide locally sourced fresh seafood.
The team consisted of four people, Iyana Admasu, Melody Alexander, Jake Mastroianni, and myself. Iyana was responsible for Interview and the Design System. Melody was responsible for Research and Prototyping. Jake was responsible for Wireframing and Prototyping. I was in charge of Research and User Testing.
During our interview with the product owner there was clear emphasis on a few significant features:
"When I talked to fishermen in the area they were exporting and it seemed like a disconnect and seemed wasteful, non-renewable, and not locally sourced."
How would we encourage use of our app? How would we guide users through the experience? We tried using a few brainstorming methods including Worst Possible Ideas and Mind Mapping. This allowed us to refine the ideas that allowed us to achieve a seamless interaction such as the sticker that could be posted in restaurant windows to promote local seafood purchases.
Focusing on a interface that used simple design tactics allows this app to be friendly to young and old.
We also wanted to focus on a dual facing app, allowing for the app to cater to both the fishers and the restaurants.
The rating and review system allows users to share their experiences with local suppliers and restaurants, building the community within the app.
There's also a focus on making our forms resemble pen and paper input to cater to all ages. You can also specify delivery or pickup to facilitate what the fisher is able to do and what the restaurant is willing to do. Some chefs like to go to the boats and hand select their fish, while others prefer the convenience of delivery.
We were able to create a very simple design that catered to the many various users we expected. By adding simple splashes of color it made the app more friendly and visually stimulating.
It was extremely fun to bring my personal view to this, as I grew up in the fishing industry, and it was enlightening to see how that experience influenced our design choices along the way. Brainstorming with such a diverse team allowed us to truly refine our direction, and move as a team towards the finish line. In contrast to prior projects where I worked alone, I felt the ability to bounce ideas off of teammates and refine the ideas quickly allowed us to move forward with a firm direction. The entire experience was enlightening and allowed me to grow in areas that I wanted more experience in, i.e. researching and wireframing.
Back to my ProjectsBuild an app to help new students learn fellow classmates and instructors names.
During my research I found that there were many structures to help students connect including social media. However many found difficulty in matching people to ALL of their social media and in so lacked the ability to build meaningful connections with other students and teachers.
I decided to expand upon this idea. Not only is this something people encounter with school but it's also a problem encountered in new work situations and during networking such as in job fairs or work related conferences.
The problem is more complex, not remembering names causes a disconnect between people and a loss of meaningful connection. This detracted not only from their ability to build connection to others but to connect in the class environment. So we needed to create an app that allows people to connect on a deeper level. That uses structures students (and others) are already using and expands on those structures to create an easy to use system that students find helpful.
Using welcoming wording as well as keeping a simple display allows users to move through the app seamlessly.
The network portal allows for a gamification of the app. The picture a tree that you choose during the profile creation that grows as you make new connections and acts as a type of notification as it blooms and "flowers" grow when you're connections have new posts on their various social media's.
The profiles focus on ways to connect. By sharing a monthly influential quote and things that you're interested in people can look at that and cater the content they share with you to the things you both have in common. The social media links being right at the top allow for easy access to each connections social media and they light up with new notifications.
.png)
By keeping the connections easy to add we can easily replace the phone book in a user's smartphone making the app functional in a way that encourages use. Even if you add someone manually the system will check its database to see if someone with that same information is already a part of FamCon to allow connections to happen seamlessly.
Overall we didn't want to remake the wheel here. By using the already existing social media to encourage connection but allowing an internal messaging system we get away from needless sharing and encourage people to grow one on one connections. Keeping a simple design and using existing structures allow for users to navigate this app freely while having fun, encouraging connections and use.
.png)
I learned so much during this project. From understanding that an issue that seems minimal to some can be a much larger scope to others to understanding that not everyone organizes structures the same, this project was really enlightening. I truly enjoyed being able to work with a simple layout and bring some fun and animation to it. User testing enlightened me further about what people found helpful and what they perceived that they needed, as well as allowing me to problem solve in real time. In the end it was my attention to detail that helped the most. I loved every minute of this project and 10/10 would love to tackle other similar projects.
Back to my Projects