Farm to Fridge
For my senior capstone, the goal was to utilize design to create change that we wanted to see in the world. This began with brainstorming what topics I was most passionate about. After journaling for a week, I narrowed from topics about women, health, and animals, finally deciding that I wanted to change how stressful and inconvenient grocery shopping is. I had been struggling with the fact that I either spend hours each day thinking about how I was going to eat healthy. Grocery shopping would often take up my entire day, if not multiple whole days throughout the week. I have to drive nearly an hour to find more options than a Kroger and Walmart. The vision for Farm to Fridge came from the desire to simplify and streamline the process of shopping from nearby farms to find sustainable, affordable, and healthy foods. My final deliverables for this project would be the app, as well as physical deliverables like packaging.
To begin my design process, I started with a mood board of inspiration images and created the following visual guideline options to drive the next phase of design. With the colors and hand drawn aesthetic decided, I narrowed down to the font Sirenia, as it offered a wide range of weights and matched my visual style. With the colors, I drew stylized assets that would make up the logo, and eventually come to be the tissue paper packaging as well.
To decide how my app could function in the most effective way, I used a methods triangulation strategy. I began with a literature review to understand the current landscape of farmer distribution methods and how it could more easily benefit consumers and farmers alike. Then I completed a self-ethnography study, which compromised of documenting my personal experience with grocery shopping and used it as a tool to ideate potential design solutions. Finally, I did a communication audit, a direct discussion with multiple local farmers to understand from a primary source the problems that they face. With this information, I created an affinity diagram to consolidate my ideas.
With the information I needed to decide how my app would function, I began wireframing my app, then blocking in the visual elements to finish the screens of the app. Then in Adobe XD I prototyped the screens to make it functional to create a realistic mockup of how the app would work.
The next element of this capstone project was to envision how I would display it all in a gallery setting. This included finalizing my choices for the physical deliverables. I ended up creating a tote bag, which customers could use to pick up or have their food delivered in, pins that would promote brand awareness, and stickers that would function both to create brand awareness and be used to market the brand on actual produce. I created the following poster to print and hang in the gallery, and brought my physical deliverables to life.
With assistance, I mounted all of my work, and projected my video onto the wall next to my installation. I did a vinyl transfer to create my tote bag, printed on sticker paper, and used a button machine to create my deliverables.
