As part of the Interaction and Interface Design course, I worked with The Baltimore Orchard Project—a nonprofit that strengthens communities through planting and cultivating orchards. However, the organization lacked an easy and accessible way for volunteer tree stewards to share their knowledge and communicate with other stewards online.
Solution
Our solution was to design and prototype an interactive, collaborative map. The map will allow users to: locate fruit trees in Baltimore City, Connect with other tree stewards, and share information about specific trees (health, fruit yield, how to access, etc).
Tech prototype of our main map (left) and zoomed view (right).
Tech prototype of our Tree Info screen (left) and Status Update screen (right)
My Role
I worked with 2 others to complete this project. For my role, I researched the heuristics for building online communities, as well as completed a portion of our paper and tech prototypes. I also helped develop each of our user personas, and moderated half of our user tests.
Process
Identify Main Tasks: After identifying the challenge for our client, my team and I created 4 basic tasks for the interactive map:
-Locate fruit and nut trees
-Find tree steward information
-Register a new tree
-View and add status updates
-Locate fruit and nut trees
-Find tree steward information
-Register a new tree
-View and add status updates
Paper Prototyping: We then created paper prototypes (below) of the mobile design, with screens illustrating each function and their task flows.
Paper prototypes of the main screen (left) and zoomed main screen (right)
Paper prototypes of the Tree Info screen (left) and the Status Updates screen (right).
User Testing: We then recruited 6 users to test our paper prototype. Users varied in age and were representative of the actual user population.
A screenshot of one user testing session with our paper prototype.
Tech prototype: Next, my team and I created a new tech prototype in Axure, while incorporating the user feedback we got from our paper prototype tests.
Results
My team and I presented our data and tech prototype to the client. At the end of the presentation, we gave further recommendations for how the organization can accomplish its goals.
Date: May 2016
Client: The Baltimore Orchard Project
