ICFW — Farm Worker Resource App
Role: Researcher, wireframing, interface design, prototyping, copywriting
Project Type: iOS Mobile App
Duration: 3 Days
Team: Vicky Vo, Andrea De Luca
This was work done during Adobe’s 2020 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Competition for their fictitious client organization named International Consortium of Farm Workers (ICFW)
Overview
ICFW is a mobile app for farm workers to be informed with the latest news while connecting them to organizations that give them access to safety net services (i.e. legal aid, healthcare, housing aid, counseling and food distribution).
Challenges
The business challenge for my team was to design a mobile app experience that helps enhance farm workers livelihoods with a seamless verification process, sign up for services feature, and access to timely and credible information.
→ The primary functions of the app needed to be realistic and immediately ready to use
→ Verification of identity with ocr or other technology
→ 3 days to finish high-fidelity working prototype on Adobe XD
→ Working with the constraints of a team of 3
How we started
Our first instinct was to create a shared Figma file to begin creating moodboards instantaneously in real time while cataloging noteworthy designs and features other companies created.
→ Moodboard
→ Competitive Analysis
→ We made a user journey
→ Rough schedule of what we would work on for the next three days
→ Started reaching out to all our friends who might know some farm workers to understand the users
User Flow
We quickly mocked up a user flow during the sign up process of the ICFW app to better imagine what screens we will be tackling.
Competitive Analysis
We specifically liked LinkedIn’s Easy Apply feature, the way Google laid out their news content, and AirBnB’s call to action block that remained at the bottom of the screen.
None of us knew farm workers personally, so we were ecstatic when we heard back from actual farm workers willing to help in our research! We made a quick list of questions to ask our interviewees while scheduling Zoom calls.
Interview Goals
We conducted user interviews with farm workers in order to get a better understanding of the problem.
→ What obstacles are farm workers currently facing?
→ What are the most important resources farm workers need?
→ What information are farm workers comfortable sharing?
→ Would farmers benefit from self-help resources, marketing strategies, etc?
Key Insights
The more we learned about farm workers through the interviews, the more we empathized and felt the pain farm workers had to endure on a regular basis. We really believed in the project goal and impact our app could make in their lives.
→ Farm workers residing in California were mostly male, ages 30-50, and Latino/Hispanic or an indigenous group.
→ There are many different Spanish dialects making language accessibility very important
→ Top four needs include food, medical services, childcare, and credible news sources.
→ Most farm workers averaged a 3rd-grade reading level.
→ Illiterate farm workers used emojis as a form of communication.
Proposed Solution
→ To create an app that makes applying to resources more understandable and easier.
→ To provide communication support for illiterate or indigenous language users.
→ To include a credible news section relating to farm workers
→ To give farm workers a community section to spread empathy, learn and grow together.
Design
Based on the key insights, we brainstormed ways to accommodate for our low literacy users by sketching out more placements of Imagery, iconography, larger buttons, and larger font sizes in our designs.
Wireframes
I quickly drew some low fidelity wireframes to communicate my immediate thoughts to the team and show different examples of experiences users could move through. We proceeded onto Adobe XD and started dropping in placeholder text blocks, buttons, and photos.
Key Screens
Language support extended to even indigenous languages that were common to farm workers
Onboarding screen introducing the app MVPs
Verify identity screen using ocr or inputting info manually
Safety net service Calfresh application profile screen
Branding
Adobe provided a loose brand guideline for ICFW, but allowed us the freedom to change the guideline if we wished.
The team and I believed the colors were too muted to use if we wanted to create a more welcoming and engaging mobile app, so we defined a new color palette with a more vibrant green and red.
Prototyping
We tested both functionality and design by putting together our high-fidelity screens in an interactive prototype.
Takeaways
I really like interviews
Interviews were very effective and gave us clear direction of what the app would be most successful in solving after knowing what the main problems were
Split up the work
In hindsight, it would have been more effective to have accessed each other’s strengths and weaknesses from the very beginning in order to divide and conquer copywriting, wireframes, prototyping, etc.
Never stop communicating
I was very proud that our team excelled in communication and collaboration utilizing the many online tools available:
Zoom for video/audio chatting and conducting interviews
Figma for fast pace moodboarding
Adobe XD to create our high-fidelity screens and prototype.
Adobe XD Prototyping
I was able to learn how to use XD’s powerful prototype and animation tools.
Next steps
I struggled with making decisions based on assumptions, because we did not include the user in every phase of the project. With only 3 days to create a working prototype, lightning fast decisions were made. With more time, I would have users of our target audience test the app through our active prototype to list out improvements we could make and judge the effectiveness of our solutions.