Peoria Fresh

August 2023 - Present

Working with a team of designers to create the design system, website layout, and branding for the Peoria Fresh project to make it as simple and inviting as possible. The design and layout will then be implemented by a team of Computer Science students.

The Challenge

Food insecurity is a major issue across America, with many people lacking the money and resources to be able to feed themselves and their families. The food insecurity rate in America as of 2021 is 10.9%, with the rate in Peoria County being slightly higher than that at 11.1%. Around 21,000 people, including 6,500 children, experienced food insecurity in the county in 2019 according to Feeding America. Fruits and vegetables in particular are difficult for disadvantaged families to afford and are greatly important for proper nutrition. There is a lack of communication with gardeners that has led to them growing produce with no knowledge of what families want or need, or what food banks need and don’t need. If this issue could be solved, it would allow for disadvantaged families to get the fruits and vegetables they need for little to no cost.

The Project

Peoria Fresh is a website project that will help connect gardeners, food banks, and families to create a healthier community within the Peoria area. The idea is that families will be able to go into their local food banks to make requests for specific fruits and vegetables at kiosks. These requests and where they were requested will be saved within the Peoria Fresh servers. Gardeners would then be able to view these requests on the Peoria Fresh website and accept ones that they wish to take on. They would then begin planting their request and could update the progress of their growth within the website to keep the food banks up to date. When their requests are ready to be brought in, the gardeners can schedule their deliveries. This system would make it much easier for disadvantaged families in the Peoria area to have access to fresh produce. This project was begun by the Computer Science department, with the User Experience Design students being brought in to help make the prototype more user friendly and visually appealing.

The Process

The Design System

The first order of business for my team was to come up with a design system for the website and branding. A FigJam file was created where each member of the team began to put down ideas for potential color schemes, typography, textures, and logos. After doing that, we would vote on which ones we liked the most, with the most liked ones being used moving forward. The most liked ideas were then synthesized into a mood board that we could use as a reference going forward. The color scheme we decided upon is meant to reflect an orchard with the orange of carrots, the red of tomatoes, and the green of leaves. We also included an off-white and a light cream color for pleasant background colors. We chose the reliable Poppins as our header text and the easily legible Rubik as our body text. We also found many great professional pictures of fruits and vegetables that could be used on the site. One of our team members even created cute characters that we would go on to use in much of our branding. Our logo combines the Peoria Fresh initials with a strawberry to show that it’s about fresh food, but also a heart to show that it’s also about caring for the people of Peoria.

The User Flow

The next order of business was to create the user flow for the gardener website portion of the project. Several people in the group made their own versions of how they imagined the flow to go. The different flows were all examined and synthesized into a singular flow based on what we believed would work best for the user. This process led to the idea of the gardener dashboard screen, a screen that combines many pages from the prototype into one page. It would allow users to toggle what plants they need to grow, what plants are growing, and which are ready for delivery all in one place. We also had the idea to add a food bank directory to the flow so that gardeners could easily locate the banks they wish to bring their produce into. Another idea we added to the flow was the user info screen which would keep track of the amount the gardener has donated and present community success stories to give them a sense of accomplishment.

The Mockups

With the user flow established, it was time to move onto the creation of the mockups for how the screens would be laid out and look. A major focus of the designs was separating different pieces of information using a card system, which can be seen across the screens. On the community suggestions screen, each of the requested fruits and vegetables are on different cards where gardeners can choose how much of each they would like to take on. Each card also has a photo of the produce to make it easier to find the correct one while skimming. The cards on the food pantries screen were designed to give gardeners the most pertinent information about each and they are in alphabetical order to make them simple to find. The gardener dashboard screen took the longest to design as it had to contain a large amount of information in a small space. It was designed in a way that follows the common human viewing habit of looking from left to right, top to bottom. In the top left there is the “To Plant” list where accepted requests appear initially after being taken on and before being grown. After users mark a request as grown, it will be moved to the “Growing” list immediately to the right. Then when the produce is marked as harvested, it will be moved downward to the “Harvested Produce” list. The card system on this screen allows for requests to easily and seamlessly move from one section to another.

The Branding

After submitting the screen designs to the CS students for them to implement, we moved on to create branding material for the project. The project is going to be shown off at Bradley University’s 2024 Fuse Showcase, so we have created a multitude of branding materials using our design system. We’ve designed posters, banners, flyers, and social media posts to promote the showcase as well as the food drive we are hosting at the event. We’ve even designed seed packets with information about what the project is about that we are going to hand out at the showcase. The design for our booth at the showcase is based on fruit vendor carts since Peoria Fresh is all about providing fresh produce for the people of Peoria.

The Results

The results have yet to be seen as the project is still a work in progress, but we will see how the people of Peoria respond to it soon at Fuse. The event is on April 20th, 2024 at the Peoria Riverfront Museum. We hope for the showcase and the food drive to be a resounding success and for the project to be fully implemented soon.