The Wicked Problem of Food Sustainability | Case Study
Today officially marks the end of week #1 at Ironhack’s UX/UI Design school, and wow was it a full one! Without wasting any time, we dove straight into our first project — the Wicked Problem Design Challenge.
A Wicked Problem is:
“A social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems” — Austin Center for Design
My teammates, Zach Manzi and Lauren Todd, and I chose the Wicked Problem of food sustainability. Our challenge:
How might we help communities access the seasonal produce of their region fueling fair and honest relationships between producers and customers while ensuring food safety for all?
At first, this seemed like a very daunting task. How do we solve something that potentially can’t be solved, and where do we even start? Rather than getting too caught up in these anxiety-ridden questions, we came up with our team name, Stellar Celery (later to be reduced to our app name Celery), and started to break down the process into bite-sized chunks.
The Approach
For this project, we utilized the Design Thinking framework (above) developed by the Stanford d. School, in conjunction with Dan Nessler’s Revamped Double Diamond workflow (below). I’ll be referencing these frameworks throughout this case study.
Given the parameter of this four-day sprint, we focused on only the first three stages of the Design Thinking process: Empathize, Define, Ideate.
A quote from my instructor’s, David Fast, class this week that really stuck with me throughout this project was:
“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” — Albert Einstein
My former, un-trained design thinking mind, would have started thinking of solutions to this wicked problem well before the 55-minute mark. I believe we often have a tendency to jump to conclusions because of our excitement to come up with a solution coupled with a fear of the unknown. However, with Einstein’s quote circulating in my head, I really came to embrace the user research phase where we gathered both qualitative data through user interviews and quantitative data through surveys.
EMPATHIZE
Surveys
We kicked off our research by creating a survey to better understand peoples’ habits around buying fresh produce — we define produce as fruits, vegetables, eggs, etc. (non-frozen versions). We received the most survey responses from a Subreddit called “Eating healthy on a cheap budget”, with additional responses from friends and family. In total, we collected 143 surveys in less than 24hrs!
The large majority of respondents stated they are familiar with seasonal produce, but only 35% even considered seasonal when buying groceries. Additionally, when asked about how easy it is to find information about locally grown produce near them, about 31% of respondents said not easy or I don’t know.
Creating survey questions to accurately capture the population posed to be one of the tougher challenges for us in this case study. Questions needed to be worded appropriately and ordered in a way that didn’t lose the respondents’ attention. Overall, the survey design process is an area that I’d like to explore further because the knowledge we can gather from this stage truly sets the tone for the type of solution we can build.
Interviews
While quantitative data is very insightful to capture a birds-eye view of the problem, the qualitative data is where we can truly collect rich data and learn about peoples’ feelings and attitudes. We started by interviewing six people who consider themselves to be the primary grocery shoppers for their household. Questions were focused around their habits, knowledge of seasonal produce and local farmer’s markets, and goals associated with buying fresh produce.
“Buying local is better for the globe and my goal is to follow that narrative.” — Kathryn McClure (pictured below)
Given the current COVID-19 lockdown conditions, we conducted our interviews over Zoom and by phone. Video/ phone conferencing has lots of pros, but when it comes to interviews, it does pose a challenge. Primarily, it’s difficult to pick up on body language and micro-expressions that help convey how the respondent truly feels. While our research process was short due to the nature of the four-day sprint, we gained enough valuable insights to be able to continue on to the next phase.
DEFINE
Having completed the empathy phase of Design Thinking, we now had a foundation to build off for the define phase. It was time to turn our data into actionable information and to create a POV based on user needs and insights (not our own generalizations and biases). As one of the main mantras in the UX community states:
“You are not the user!”
Affinity Mapping
To help us better organize our findings, we created an Affinity Map. We took our survey data (light blue) and 6 interviewees (color-coded by person) and placed them on a Miro board (free online collaborative whiteboard). By grouping similar responses together, we were able to create broad labels to encapsulate different ideas.
As someone who likes structure and organization, this step came as a big relief to me. The affinity mapping process was also exciting because it felt like a “peek around the corner” for the types of solutions we might ideate in the next phase.
Zooming in, we found that the largest groupings of sticky notes collected were under the following three topics: uninformed seasonal preference, buying local, and convenience.
Whether users sought out seasonal foods or not, most were not making informed decisions — simply making spontaneous decisions at the point of purchase. In regard to buying local, the general consensus was that local is the preference. Lastly, most users valued convenience above all else.
Empathy Map
With those three groupings in mind, we then created an Empathy Map to dig further into the psyche of our users.
Examining their “pains”, we found that users were overwhelmed with information, they lacked education on the topic, and lacked the time and money to shop accordingly. For their “gains” (needs/hopes), we learned that users sought to make ethical choices, better understand their options, comprehend labels, and support their local communities.
This exercise was a vital precursor to creating our user persona because we were no longer subject to availability bias or the false-consensus effect — referring to
people’s tendency to assume that others share their beliefs and will behave similarly in a given context. Only people who are very different from them would make different choices.
To believe that others are like us is deeply woven into our DNA. However, when it comes to great design, we must consciously remove ourselves from the equation and design with the user at the center of the problem.
Persona
Say hello to Curious Carly!
We developed this persona after synthesizing the pains and gains from the empathy map into goals, needs, and frustrations. Curious Carly is a health-conscious social media manager living in Los Angeles and represents a composite of the majority of the target audience. She is interested in eating more locally and making more sustainable choices but has a series of needs that must be met and frustrations to overcome. Overall, creating a persona helped us humanize the data in a way that made the pain points feel more relatable.
As-Is Scenario Map
To document a collective understanding of our user flow and to explore new ideas for solving the right problem, we created an As-Is Scenario Map for Curious Carly.
Curious Carly considers eating seasonal foods and visiting local vendors, but she’s really more concerned with just accomplishing the task of shopping. This exercise helped us begin to imagine what shopping actually looks like for our users, and better prepared us for mapping out the user journey in the next step.
User Journey Map
After combing through our insights from both the Persona and As-Is Scenario Map, we created our User Journey Map to understand at a glance the high-level user experience. We started with a rough draft sticky note version on our Miro board…
…then created version two (below) where we removed sticky notes, cleaned up the UI, and uncovered our three main problem areas: Information overload, lack of knowledge (seasonal or local), and budget restrictions:
Identifying these three main pain-points was a very rewarding part of the Design Thinking process. At this point, we were on day three of four in our sprint, so in the interest of time, we focused on the information overload pain-point. With our new concrete understanding of our users, we were ready to start ideating!
IDEATE
Brainstorming outlandish ideas is one of my favorite things to do! — me.
So naturally, this part of the User-Centered Design experience was one of my favorites. We kicked off the ideation phase by creating HMW (How Might We…) statements. For instance, HMW give users the information they actually need about local and sustainable produce? This exercise got the creative juices flowing and primed us for a brainstorming session.
We started the sticky note rapid-pace brainstorm by individually time-boxing ourselves for four-minutes. Time-boxing was a technique that I didn’t have much experience with, but have grown very fond of over the course of this project. It allowed our group to be laser-focused, then come back to the (virtual) table with fresh views and critiques.
Following the four-minute brainstorm, we each took turns placing our best idea on the board. If one of us had a similar idea, we would attach our note to create a grouping. From there, we continued to brainstorm off that grouping until we felt ready to move on to the next new idea. This process went on for another 15 minutes, resulting in five main clusters of ideas on our Miro board (below).
Coming up with ideas in a timed environment is exhilarating, but also tricky. Eventually, you start to run out of ideas. To give ourselves one final creativity boost, we spent another five minutes coming up with bad ideas and then reverse-brainstormed them into good ideas. In doing so, we were sure to exhaust all possible solutions.
Collectively, we came up with 77 ideas in about 25minutes. We then used a dot voting system to pull out the best five ideas. At this point, we could almost “taste the victory” of landing on that one juicy idea. To widdle down those five ideas into the single most important idea to focus on, we implemented one more mind-mapping exercise.
The MoSCoW Method
The MoSCoW Method is a convergent thinking technique used to help identify and prioritize which aspect of your product should be built first. MoSCoW stands for — Must have, Should have, Could have, Will have. For instance, a Must have is any typical app icon like a search bar, navigation icons, filters, etc.
The idea we decided to focus on is the calendar feature — a simple calendar display that depicts an icon representing which produce items are in-season that month or week.
MVP
To recap, our three main pain-points were information overload, convenience, and cost. Due to the parameters of the sprint, we only focused on the first pain-point — information overload. We turned that pain-point into our MVP (Minimal Viable Product) statement:
Celery is a mobile app that delivers calendar-based tips about seasonal produce to shoppers who are curious about bringing local to their table.
With users receiving varied inputs and opinions from friends, family, articles, videos, etc., they are overloaded with a lack of clarity and direction. By aggregating data from farmers, sellers, KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders), experts, and any other industry professionals, Celery can become the resource that users can trust for accurate information. When avocados are in season this summer, get ready to see an avocado icon on your calendar!
Mockup of Concept
When the user opens Celery, they will be greeted by a familiar sign-up screen, followed by a couple more screens to help us better understand the user’s background and type of information they’re interested in learning about.
If the user is unsure, then we will provide suggestions (i.e. What’s Hot in the month of April). The app will then show a familiar-looking calendar with icons representing seasonal produce.
Success & Failure Metrics
We will know if Celery is successful if we are achieving 5-star reviews in the app store, seeing consistent active monthly users, and seeing a steady increase in the number of users. We will know if our app needs tweaking if we see less than 4-star reviews in the app store, a rise in the number of inactive users, and churn rates.
Knowledge Gaps
There’s always room to grow (pun intended)! First off, it would have been helpful to spend a little more time on developing our survey questions — do users consider “local” produce to be better quality than non-local grocery store produce? Also, 50% of respondents said it was easy to find information about local produce, but we did not ask them where they find this information and on what device(s)! Lastly, additional secondary research would have been helpful to paint an even more detailed picture of the problem.
Next Steps
In the future, we plan to roll out a feature that connects growers and experts with shoppers via a chat feature. We also plan on partnering with chefs to showcase seasonal recipes and virtual cooking experiences designed specifically for the busy working professional. Eventually, we also plan on integrating an AR shopping assistant to help identify seasonal produce while you’re in the store.
TAKEAWAYS
At each step in the User-Centered Design process, it’s very easy to want to jump to a solution. Learning to control my thinking and stay present in each step with only the goals of that step in mind was a challenge. Similarly, understanding the importance of removing my own bias and really focusing on the persona that we were building was another learning experience. Again, “YOU are not the USER”!
Due to the nature of this four-day design sprint, time was always of the essence. So, it’s important to not get stuck on details and perfectionism. Our team found time-boxing to be one of the most useful tools in keeping us on track and progressing forward.
Lastly, given the COVID-19 situation, our entire cohort is currently operating remotely. This poses a variety of challenges, but with the help of awesome tools like Zoom, Slack, Miro, XD, and G-Suite we could all work well and efficiently together in a virtual space.
Overall, this design challenge was an eye-opening experience. My conventional ways of thinking were tested and my imagination was stretched. I got to know my classmates better, feed off their ideas, and collaborate with my amazing teammates to produce a final solution and presentation.
As I round out my first week at Ironhack, I’m eagerly looking forward to the next eight weeks, as well as my future career in this exciting space.
Please let me know your thoughts on this case study — always open to feedback! If you’d like to connect, here is my LinkedIn.
Thanks for tuning in!
