Giving Tree Farm

Overview

Giving Tree Farm provides vocational training and a rehabilitation program for cognitively impaired persons. People who have sustained Traumatic Brain Injuries help grow fresh produce and make handmade items for local restaurants, grocery stores, and farmers markets. While the farm is owned by Community Based Interventions (CBI), the client wanted a new space that would highlight the farm and introduce a new way for customers to easily purchase produce.

The opportunities for this project included:

1. Giving Tree Farm can grow its business which will also help the workers recovering from traumatic brain injuries.
2. With a new image and easier access to purchasing produce, customers will have more incentive to shop.
3. Highlighting the mission creates a stronger sense of community as more people become regular customers.
4. E-commerce opens another opportunity to engage with customers instead of being limited to traditional interactions.

My Role

Research

Personas

Task

Brand Identity

Create a new website that gives GTF a space to grow without being overshadowed by CBI information. Develop new branding that highlights the farm’s goals and overall tone –  naturally grown, community-oriented, and nurturing.

Simplify Steps

The audience is largely made up of people who aren’t fluent with tech; create an e-commerce site that is simple for users to navigate without feeling overwhelmed. Creating an e-commerce site should make the customer’s purchasing experience quick and convenient.

Summary of Insights

• Too many processes are done manually
• The experience feels clunky
• The site needs to be functional with each season’s new inventory
• GTF’s mission and values need to stand out
• Maintain the newsletter in addition to e-commerce
• Need self-sufficient inventory
• Improve order communication with customers

Design

Early in the design process, I and a teammate began drafting logos and color palettes. The branding for GTF is meant to feel personal, friendly, warm, and compassionate. We created a logo and a color palette that encourages that familiar feeling and conveyed the ideals of the local farm.

Within our first design sprint, we conducted the crazy 8’s process which  allowed us to collaborate on our favorite ideas and combine design elements in unique ways that would accomplish the user goals. Once we had a rough sketch of the site figured out, we moved on to low-fidelity wireframes.

Once approved, the team created high-fidelity wireframes complete with the logo and color palette to show the client.

Final Design Solution

Delivery

We were able to successfully build the e-commerce website for Giving Tree Farm. The build took longer than expected due to difficulty registering the domain name and the timing of the build in relation to the end of the term, but all of the design challenges were solved and users are now able to easily navigate through the site and online ordering process.

Obstacles

This project had a handful of issues for a variety of reasons. The startup process of getting the team together and on board didn’t begin until late February/early March. The team as a whole kept learning new information and uncovering more design obstacles which required us to go back to the drawing board multiple times. Because of this, my team didn’t begin building until April which is close to the end of the academic term. Due to many members of the team graduating during the final stages of the build and the other members finishing the term, this project’s deadline was pushed back and wasn’t completed until mid-June. 

Throughout the research process, both the UX and writing teams experienced difficulties staying on schedule due to difficulty working with the client. The team would meet all together with the client about once a month and at each client meeting, more requirements for the build and content would be brought up by the client. Each time The Cube was contacted by the client, more information would surface that required changes in the design and how the UX team planned on building the website. The inconsistency in information coming in made it difficult to keep everyone on the same page and caught up with the proposed changes. 

Once the website was completed and the team was ready to link the site to its chosen domain, The Cube’s WordPress domain allowance was full and we had to wait for approval to get more domains allowed on our server space. After we got approval, we learned that the server capacity couldn’t withstand more sites and we had to migrate the site to a new server.

Overall, this project had hiccups along the way, but the teams were able to navigate through the issues and deliver a project that they and the client are happy with.

Futures

Shortly after the completion of the Giving Tree Farm project, I emailed Matthew to check in and see how their team was doing with the new website and I got an automatic email response saying that Matthew’s email no longer exists. I called a representative of CBI Rehabilitation which oversees Giving Tree Farm and learned that Matthew no longer worked for GTF and that the farm was now under new management. 

After contacting the new management team, we received a reply indicating that they weren’t particularly interested in continuing maintenance on the site at this current time and would reassess needs in the future.

Ultimately the future of Giving Tree Farm is to hopefully continue expanding its online presence, improve its sales through e-commerce, and update its website as the farm itself expands and changes.