Urban, rural and suburban foraging is seeing renewed growth thanks to the hyperlocal food movement and emerging food trends. However, foraging comes with both health and environmental risks, especially for those new to the practice. How might we leverage new technolgoy to help foragers gather in a safe and environmentally responsible way?
*This project was completed with Jenny Desouchet.
Research
Concept
Branding
Competitive Analysis
Persona
Journey Map
UI
Pencil
Sketchbook
Illustrator
Photoshop
XD
A competitive analysis of current mushroom hunting and foraging apps revealed that many of the solutions are utilitarian, digital replicas of the mushroom hunting and foraging books that have been around for years. While the apps prove to be helpful resources, they are not worth the trade off of introducing technology into an outdoor experience. Furthermore, current solutions do not tap into the growing culture around foraging, leverage new technologies, appeal to millennials, or prove helpful to inexperienced foragers trying to identify unfamiliar species.
Web analytics research and a nationwide study on foraging conducted in 2017 show that foragers represent diverse ethnic and national backgrounds, income levels, education levels, and age groups. While foraging is an age-old practice, it is currently seeing renewed growth, especially among millennial city dwellers, stemming from interest in and trends surrounding the medicinal benefits of mushrooms (also known as functional mushrooms), the hyperlocal food movement, and edible flowers. Based on these insights, I created two personas in order to ensure the app would appeal to new and more experienced foragers.
Inspiration for Wild Foragers’ branding was found in vintage books, natural colors, and the simple joy that comes from being in the outdoors. The foraging process involves noticing the small details in everyday things and the company's branding is meant to inspire a similar search. The design process included a thorough research phase followed by identifying tone words, creating moodboards, sketching, wireframing and prototyping.
The Wild Foragers wordmark references foraging books from the 1970s yet remains in line with current typography trends. The typeface Bookmania Black, elegant and classic with cheerful glyphs, contrasts with the simple and straightforward lines of Avenir Medium, creating a brand that is trustworthy, adventurous, and down to earth. The onboarding iconography is playful and detailed, a welcome compliment to the brand's logo and overall tone.
The Wild Foragers App and Kit work together to help foragers safely collect food from any environment. The app leverages artificial intelligence image recognition technology to help users quickly and magically identify plant species. Users can also find out if a plant is edible or poisonous, read more about the species, browse recipes, and mark the plant’s location on a map. The Wild Foragers Kit compliments the app and includes all of the necessary tools for a successful foraging trip. If the app's AI technology is unable to identify a species, the app will provide instructions on how to conduct tests offline.
The Wild Foragers onboarding process was designed to be educational and to establish trust with the user. It starts by quickly introducing the features of the app, including image recognition, poisonous plant detection, and mapping capabilities. Knowing that many of the apps' users are new to foraging, basic safety information and etiquette tips are also provided. It also explains why the app will need to access the users' camera and location, and is transparent about the capabilities and faults of artificial intellegence. Finally, the user is asked to accept a disclaimer before being able to access the rest of the app.
