ICFW — Farm Worker Resource App
Role: Researcher, wireframing, interface design, prototyping, copywriting
Project Type: iOS Mobile App
Duration: 3 Days
Team: Curtis Ying (research, copywriting, design), Vicky Vo (research, copywriting, design), and Andrea De Luca (research, copywriting, design)
Tools: Adobe XD, Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, & Invision
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
Context
Farm workers are the invisible frontline labor force of a country’s food supply. While many nations are reeling from the economic shocks of the pandemic, farm workers— the vast majority being immigrants— make sure that we don’t go hungry. Many of them do not qualify for government stimulus packages, making it critical that they get access to safety net services like legal aid, healthcare, housing aid, counseling and/or food distribution.
Challenges and Requirements
The business challenge for my team was to design a mobile app experience that helps enhance farm worker’s 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
User Interviews
We successfully interviewed one farm worker and one social worker (who works directly with farm workers) in order to get a better understanding of the problem.
This step is crucial to truly place myself in their shoes, empathize, and realize actual user feelings, what they are seeing, hearing, doing, and their current environment.
Some questions asked:
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?
Distill Findings
→ Farm workers residing in California were mostly male, ages 30-50, and Latino/Hispanic or an indigenous group.
→ Most farm workers own a smart phone.
→ 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.
Problem Definition
Farm workers have a hard time applying for key services, because of language barriers and complicated application processes.
Proposed Solution
By creating an intuitive user experience with communication support, farm workers can easily and effectively access important and relevant key services.
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.
Defining the User
Target demographic
Male farm workers residing in California, ages 30-50, and Latino/Hispanic or an indigenous group.
Personas
User Flow
We mocked up a few user flows to better imagine what screens we will be tackling and whether the flows made sense.
The process of applying for a safety net service.
Moodboards
As a team, we created a shared Figma file to begin creating moodboards instantaneously in real time while cataloging noteworthy designs and features other companies made.
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.
Minimal Viable Product (MVP)
Our minimal viable product is an app with an easy resource application process, communication support, credible news section, and a community section.
With many farm workers averaging 3rd-grade reading skills, frequent use of Imagery and iconography, larger buttons, font sizes, and concise text unite to accommodate for our low literacy users through the app.
Wireframes
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.
User Flows
Application Assistance Journey
The user who needs assistance translating an application can easily request an interpreter via voice call with a live person which is invaluable.
Signing Up with Photo Verification Journey
The user decides to take a quicker process of signing up through the ICFW app by using a government ID. The ocr scans the card and accurately auto populates the information onto the form.
Information, News, and Community Journey
The user may explore and join many groups along with a news button to find a list of credible and relevant news.
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.
Success Metrics
To judge whether the ICFW app is successful, I would follow up with a mix of qualitative and quantitative data:
→ Usability testing the latest app prototype through a series of tasks (success rates and amount of errors made).
→ High number of applications submitted through the app.
→ There are more downloads of the app.
→ Ratings on the App Store yield high star results.
Next Steps: Based on the success metrics, subsequent iterations would be made to improve the app and experience to satisfy our target users. I would make adjustments to the user flow accordingly and possibly add or remove app features after feedback. Additional wireframes and prototypes would be made for more user testing, all of this to continue the cycle of learning, testing, and launching through the iterative design process.
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. If we had more time to finish this project, we could have benefited with more interviews with farm workers and user testing of our latest prototype of the app.
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
Google docs for note taking during interviews
Figma for fast pace moodboarding
Adobe XD to create our high-fidelity screens and prototype.