Product, branding
Urban Farming
This app is the MVP of a bigger project related to urban farming and self sustainable and automatised agriculture, scoped to evolve into self growing produce inside industrial containers.
Context:
K+S had some initiatives around sustainability and agriculture. They wanted a proof of concept on their ideas to later execute on a bigger project.
The results:
An app aimed towards environmentally
minded users who want to discover and support locally sourced
businesses in Berlin. And built to provide K+S with data and better understanding of the market.
This was done in cooperation with a team of engineers who were developing a self-sustaining food container that would later be part of the map featured locations.
A few things to solve
The app was just the first step in a plan, big hardware was going to be implemented based on the information, expectation and interest the app would gather.
Placement of self sustaining food container
Gathering data about potential target market
Community building and business discoverability
User research and motivations of bio shoppers, and environmentally minded people
Buy in from restaurants and markets
The usual 1-2-3
We defined a product vision, we want to release a self-sustaining urban farming container.
Defining product vision
Project plan is defined. Requires an app and a plan to release a self-sustaining urban farming container.
Defining value proposition
Ideation phase for app begins. Marketing approaches related to a novelty app are considered, but out of budget for the client.
Product research
Research leads us to a different approach. Gathering data to understand our target group. By slowly building a community and understanding where in Berlin they are focused we would be able to launch the containers exactly where they would get a louder reception.
User analysis / ideation
App idea is settled, the best way to gather data, inform users about sustainability and entice them to collaborate is to build a business finder map. It’s main focus is sustainability. Farms, urban farms, farmers markets and local stores are give priority.We defined a product vision, we want to release a self-sustaining urban farming container.
The urban farming app
A map filled with locally sourced restaurants, stores, urban farms, farms, markets and events.
Doing the AI icon before it was cool
By tapping on the "magic" button the app will suggest you the most popular or best rated locations around you without the need of LLMs!
No need to contain your excitement.
Of course this needed some foundations
The map and lists were sorted in 6 different categories. All of them with some specific characteristics that anybody could fill up. Each category is clearly defined by a custom icon, color and pattern that appears on the business profiles.
Some more features
The event feature escaped our initial research and came in (quite late) as a client request. We managed to make it fit, with a slight semantic issue on how we would label it on the map and the list.
Iconography
My favorite is the urban farm icon with the little sprout on top of the buildingthe type of business it is.
Custom illustrations
Sign up screen changes depending on the city
the user is located. Currently the only city
available is Berlin.
the user is located. Currently the only city
available is Berlin.
Store profile
Each business and event has their own profile
with their own color and iconography based on
the type of business it is.
with their own color and iconography based on
the type of business it is.
Events list
Events have their own section, plus hierarchy differences between events based on timeframe
This app is already a bit old
You can give it a try on your Android phone, but I don't think it has received any update in a long while. It was also on iOS but it doesn't seem to be available anymore.
