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 seasonal Recipes are available at the right time during the daily ritual of preparing food at home
Encourages deeper physical interactions
On Saturday, when members pick up their share of the vegetables – meeting face to face
Sharing knowledge has a few advantages:
a stronger sense of community
increased fulfiment (learning new skills – together)
prevents food from being wasted
The experience was upgraded from ‘a product on a subscription basis’, to a more ‘holistic and complete journey’ which includes support
A preview of the process
3 minute read
🔁 Iterations
First validate the problem and solution spaces, after that you can solve problems
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.
🕵️♂️ 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 purposes.
Observing ‘what the members were attempting to do through improvisation’ provided the basis for a design.
🙋♀️🙋♂️ A Participative approach
“By the community, for the community”
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.
Remember that you’re looking for the ‘best answer’,
Ray Dalio – Principles
not simply the ‘best answer that you can come up with yourself’.
Thanks to Boudewijn and Paul,
as well as Danny and HelloFresh
P.S. more on the Creative Process
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.
Note: the featured thumbnail photo can be found at the source.