"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."
- Hippocrates
Eating fresh, clean food is the most important thing you can do for yourself. Purchasing food direct from a farm you trust is not simple. Until now. I'm going to take you on my journey of creating an application that delivers food from the farm to your house.
I call it...
The Inspiration
This is my son Carter. (Yes, that is actually a picture of him and not a stock photo.) Since he was born I became aware that most food I ingested was over-processed and filled with sugar. I did not want this for him. I started shopping at farmer's markets. I started paying attention to where my food comes from. I wanted to know where my food was coming from. I wasn't alone.
"It's All About the Benjamins."
- Puff Daddy
I live in Atlanta, Georgia. All around me there are farms and open land. The business of agriculture has always been healthy. Mobile applications have been on the rise for years now and there is an "app" for just about everything. I was amazed to realize no application existed that allowed me to order produce to my house and know exactly where it came from. I had to do something.
What are my options?
There are some options out there to get food delivered right from a farm. The first thing I discovered was that none of these options have a mobile app. They also require you to sign up for a yearly membership and have recurring deliveries pre-scheduled. Some only allow you to order package "baskets" with pre-determined food. I am trying to eat healthy, but one person can only eat so many beets. Most users will delete an app within one minute if they can't get what they are looking for. Why are these services are asking them to commit to a yearly membership? This is why services like Postmates are so successful. I can't get apples grown in Georgia from Postmates though. So let's get building.
"There is no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs."
- Unknown
A lot of iterating goes on between mocking up wireframes and delivering a high fidelity product. It's a long road of trying things and seeing how people respond. It takes a lot of courage to spend hours creating something and open that up to users and let them pick it apart. I fully embrace the process of taking critiques from others and using it to improve upon my vision.
What comes next?!?!
Continuing to iterate based on user research is still ongoing. The next thing to concentrate on is putting more emphasis on the farm to customer relationship. I've completed surveys with users that already order from farm to house delivery services. They all noted that they deal with the things they don't want because knowing they support a particular farm is important to them. Tackling the way we handle food waste is important too. I am looking to start a program that uses the excess food to stock local shelters.
