A website designed to help individuals connect with others in their local community in order to share their extra homegrown produce and reduce food waste.
Our customer is someone who enjoys gardening but has a hard time figuring out what to do with their excess produce.
Food waste has major environmental impacts, it causes the resources used to grow to go to waste and contribute to greenhouse emissions. We at Frubbie are trying to tackle this problem on a household level by addressing the needs of home gardeners. Many people enjoy gardening as a hobby and want to eat healthier.
However, after each harvest, they are left with an abundance of homegrown produce and are unsure what to do with it. Extra produce is usually wasted because it is not used.
The problem now is that there is no effective solution for home gardeners to advertise and distribute excess homegrown produce. There are many home gardeners nearby who have extra produce, but not everyone is aware of this. As a result, we are creating a design solution to connect the community while reducing food waste.
Problem Space - Our customer is someone who enjoys gardening but has a hard time figuring out what to do with their excess produce
By providing a platform for individuals to share their excess homegrown produce, they will reach a broader community of people who will put it to better use, resulting in less food waste.
By solving the problem, we are trying to accomplish:
The concept is really impressive. The login and register page is very easy to navigate. Adding a search bar for addresses would be helpful, and the small blurb on how to navigate using the map would come in handy. Measurement criteria could be made simpler - you can have 1 branch of cilantro, 3 limes, etc but you don't really weigh oranges, on the other hand, they could be in (ounces, lbs, kgs, etc.) or just numbers (3 oranges).
The homepage is clear but it needs some description. Your location on the post after sharing the post doesn't make sense. Search your location can also use API, One less step for the user. It would be nice to have the pop-up screen actually on the individual page so I don't have to click a lot. What is the growing condition? It can mean a lot and would be helpful to know if I am buying a plant.
A possible solution will be a platform for the users to connect with others by posting and claiming extra homegrown produce in their local community. This solution will require two users.
User A can share their extra homegrown produce with others by posting it on the platform. This will help user A in reaching out to a larger community that may be interested in their excess homegrown produce. User B can use the platform to claim any excess produce in their local area. This will help user B in saving money, eating healthier, and connecting with their neighbors. The solution will help to reduce food waste and connect users with their community.
After we showcased our prototype to the users again, we learned that there is no perfect solution and we must listen to our users and always iterate the designs.
Technical implementation
What is your tech stack?
Technical challenges
What are some key takeaways?
After doing our user interviews, we decided our product has a lot of scopes and the same lot of work to do. Collectively as a team, we have decided to work on it in the future and make it a household name when it comes to giving away free produce in the local community. We have a long way to go but we have just gotten started.
Even though all of us are at different stages of life, we overcame multiple hurdles including schedules and managing expectations between each other but the key ingredient which made us reach the ending was communication. The learning curve was steep but the people made the journey easier.
