About project
FarmWheels is a mobile marketplace that combines e-commerce and social media for small farmers. The app allows farmers to share live updates from their fields, run short-form video content, and sell fresh produce directly to local customers. By blending storytelling with shopping, FarmWheels helps farmers move perishable inventory faster while giving customers more transparency and trust in what they buy
About project
-
FarmWheels is a mobile marketplace that combines e-commerce and social media for small farmers. The app allows farmers to share live updates from their fields, run short-form video content, and sell fresh produce directly to local customers. By blending storytelling with shopping, FarmWheels helps farmers move perishable inventory faster while giving customers more transparency and trust in what they buy
Problem
:(
Small farmers often lose a significant part of their harvest simply because they can’t reach the right buyers at the right moment. Fresh produce has a short shelf life, demand is unpredictable, and communication with customers is fragmented across social media, chat, and offline markets.
From the farmer’s side, this leads to:
FarmWheels aims to bridge that gap.
From the farmer’s side, this leads to:
- Unsold surplus that turns into food waste
- No simple way to promote what’s freshly available right now
- Dependence on intermediaries and local markets with limited reach
- Low visibility into what’s actually fresh and in stock today
- Extra effort to discover local producers and compare options
- A lack of trust and context around how food is grown and handled
FarmWheels aims to bridge that gap.
Personas
When developing the project, it was crucial to understand the target audience. Based on UX research, the following personas were created to guide our design and functionality.
Persona 1: Janet
- Age: 52
- Occupation: School Principal
- Location: Rural community
- Family Status: Divorced, two adult children
Problem:
Janet enjoys the country life and the availability of local produce but finds it cumbersome to visit multiple small vendors to gather all the ingredients she needs for her weekly meals. She also struggles to find organic and specialty items, such as gluten-free and vegan products, which are necessary due to her health restrictions.
Desires from the App:
Janet would like an app that aggregates offerings from various local farmers and specialty producers in one place. She's looking for a streamlined shopping experience where she can order all her groceries and have them delivered to her doorstep. The app should offer filters for dietary preferences and provide detailed product descriptions.
Persona 2: Kevin
- Age: 30
- Occupation: Environmental Consultant
- Location: Downtown metropolitan area
- Family Status: Engaged
Problem:
Kevin is deeply committed to environmental sustainability and reducing his carbon footprint. Living in a large city, he finds it challenging to source food that aligns with his values, as most urban supermarkets stock items that have been transported long distances.
Desires from the App:
Kevin is interested in an app that connects him with local, sustainable food sources, reducing transportation emissions associated with his food consumption. He wants the app to prioritize showcasing producers who use organic and eco-friendly farming practices.
To understand how food waste shows up in everyday life, I focused on two primary user groups:
- Janet – time-poor rural consumer
- Janet lives in a rural community and cares about buying local, but visiting multiple small markets each week is time-consuming. She often ends up buying supermarket produce that travels long distances, while nearby farmers struggle to sell everything they harvest.
- Kevin – sustainability-driven urban professional
- Kevin is highly motivated to reduce his environmental footprint. He wants to support local farmers and avoid unnecessary waste, but he has no clear, convenient way to discover fresh products available “right now” in his city and to see how they were produced.
Logo
In the creative journey of designing the FarmWheel logo, I experimented with multiple styles to encapsulate the essence of farm-fresh produce.
Design goals
Based on the problem and personas, I defined three main design goals for FarmWheels:
Based on the problem and personas, I defined three main design goals for FarmWheels:
- Reduce friction between discovery and purchase
- Make it possible to go from seeing fresh produce in a feed or live stream to completing checkout in just a few steps.
- Help farmers sell perishable stock faster
- Give farmers simple tools to highlight what’s freshly harvested today, showcase urgency (limited quantities, time windows), and update availability in real time.
- Build trust through transparency and storytelling
- Use social features (posts, live video, vendor profiles) to let farmers show their process and values, so customers feel confident buying directly from them.
- Support repeatable patterns for future scaling
- Create a design system and interaction patterns that can scale from a simple MVP to richer features (subscriptions, pre-orders, community events) without redesigning the core experience.
Lo Fi Prototype
UX approach
To address these goals, I structured the experience around a few key journeys:
To address these goals, I structured the experience around a few key journeys:
- Social feed & live video to surface what’s fresh today and let farmers broadcast limited-time offers in real context.
- Product and vendor pages that combine rich storytelling (photos, posts, live sessions) with clear pricing, quantity, and delivery options.
- A simplified cart and checkout that minimizes steps and decisions, so users can complete their order before they “lose the moment.”
- Authentication and onboarding designed to be lightweight, so both farmers and customers can start using the app with minimal setup.
