Building a Community by Sharing Knowledge

Client: Herenboeren Wilhelminapark

Date: 2018
Duration: 7 months

Context:
FoodSubscription-Business-ModelCooperativeCommunityPeer-learningKnowledge-Management

Project Type:
Experience-DesignUser-ResearchImplementation-Project

Key Activities:
Co-DesignProblem-FramingCo-ReflectionCommunity-BuildingAgile-Product-DevelopmentMachine-Learning

A HerenBoeren farm is owned by a cooperative of 150 families. They have access to seasonal vegetables, meat, eggs, and whatever else they choose to organize.

The project started with wide need-finding, and was later framed to ‘facilitate learning between the members of the community’. This was valuable because the users take the food directly from the farm, which requires a forgotten set of skills to clean, store and cook the vegetables and meat.

The solution took the form of a digital platform which allows the users to share seasonal recipes and relevant tips. The website is running live so we overcame many of the administrative and moderation challenges.

Complements the physical medium

Tips and Recipes are within reach when users need them most: at home

Encourages deeper physical interactions between members

Especially on Saturday, when they pick up groceries at the farm

🕵️‍♂️ Need finding

User Research was used to uncover the 3 key needs as well as other frustrations. These were not explicitly stated by management at the beginning.

The discoveries were made through the initial research (using Contextual Interviews and Shadowing) and were later clarified by organizing a Co-Reflection for validation.

🔁 Iterations

First validate the problem and solution spaces. After that, tackle the problems, but don’t stop seeking validation and insight.

Iteration one – validating what we aim to solve:

• Helped pinpoint micro-interactions where frustrations happen: “this is where it hurts”
• Makes the assumptions explicit and ready for validation or feedback.

Iteration two – solving problems:

• Tackle the important objectives that were just discovered or validated
• Can justify investing resources to add more value

The project became truly Participative when a rapid click-through Prototype together with an Experience Flow were presented to the target audience. These two props framed the discussion around User Stories and “what if” scenarios.

Resulted in understanding:

• tips can be more relevant than recipes
• content should be created by the community itself

The session also led to the discovery of a group of members who were trying to achieve a similar thing – so we joined forces.

“By the community, for the community”

Ideation was helped by scenarios, storytelling, which slowly led to functionality, wireframes and a click-through prototype.

Sometimes a bit of acting out can do wonders for the process and getting un-stuck.

If you click through the slideshow, you will see a set of tangible figurines which were useful in acting out and storytelling purposes.