A CSA Story

Project Details

The Team

Gurudutt Perichetla - UX Designer, UX Researcher

Kevin Hwang - Project Manager, UX Researcher

Yining Liu - UX Designer, UX Researcher

Timeline

08. 2020 Secondary Research

09.2020 - 12. 2020 User Research

01.2021 - 04. 2021 Design

Tools

Figma

Miro

Zoom

The Process

Understanding the CSA Ecosystem

With the motivation of promoting sustainability (originally smart city), we dug into the local agriculture model of CSA.

Narrowing Down the Problem Space

After exploring the broad map of stakeholdersand various business models, we narrowed downour targeted problem area.

Brainstorming & Evaluation

With the user needs and pain points in mind, we brainstormed ideas and pivoted forward in a user-centered approach.

Design & Iteration

Based upon our new found expertise, lets start toexplore solutions for making the experience better!

Secondary Research

We conducted a secondary research to gain a better understanding of the CSA ecosystem

Research Goals

- To gain a general understanding of the concept

- Understand the relationships and operations of a CSA ecosystem

- Understand the values of CSA

The Traditional Concept

Supporting family scale farms in return for fresh produces



Community invest in local farms before a harvesting season in return for "shares" of weekly produce.



Customers share benefits and risks with farmer.



Customers get to explore new varieties and also to eat healthier, while farmers receive financial support.



The model strives to promote agricultural prosperity and sense of community.

CSAs Nowadays

Has expanded its reach to broader customers, with different distribution models and scope.

Farmer's market

Multi-Farm CSA

Box Scheme
BAG'd in Atlanta

Farm to Restaurant
Clover from Boston

General CSA Journey through a Year



Who are the actors in the CSA ecosystem?

With today's broader scope of CSA, actors in the system can include any of the following:

Farmers
Field workers/laborCSA
manager/admin
Drop-site hosts, delivery

Restaurants
Schools
Non-profit Orgs
Farmers' Market

Individuals
Couples
Families

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A few inspiring services...

"Connect With THE SOURCE of FOOD"

The team selects incredible small-scale farmers and food artisans.

Working with journalists to uncover stories behind.

Within days of the harvest, Fresh produces come to your door together with stories.

Fresh, local, flavorful greens.

Recreate ideal growing climates indoor

Arrives within few hours after harvested

Traceable from seed to store

‍

always fresh, sometimes normal

Making affordable, high-quality food more accessible while helping break the cycle of food waste.

Work directly with organic farmers to support practices that benefit the environment.

User Research

We talked to both customers and other CSA stakeholders to understand their experiences and pain points

Research Goals

- Understand core customer and farmer journeys

- Uncover the pain points, likes, and dislikes from customers' and farmers' perspectives

- Look into the current tools that exist in this space

- Define a Value Proposition to offer something meaningful and different

2 Surveys

Internal - Within the HCI program (24 responses)

External (55 responses)

9 Semi-structured Interviews

2 Farmers

4 CSA Distributors and Operations Managers

3 Customers

Affinity Themes

Farmers need better platforms to support their operations of CSAs.

There's a lack of information within the CSA ecosystem.

Deficiency of connection between farmers and customers.

Farmers don't have proper marketing tools to reach out to customers.

The need of addressing Customer needs via personalized experiences.

Customers need help with ways to deal with produce.

F1.3 - “Small farms don't have the resources for marketing or IT."

O3.6 - “The tool should be designed based on farmers’ schedule, plan and preference, so that they can spend the rest of the time focusing on farming."

Affinity Theme #1

Farmers need better platforms to support their operations of CSAs.

F1.2 - “I don't actually know where our customers come from and how they heard about us."

C3.32 - “Maybe they can synchronize earlier about what’s going to be in the box in the newsletter. It helps to know what other ingredients you need for the recipe."

Affinity Theme #2

There's a lack of information within the CSA ecosystem.

F1.30 -“I just want customer service to be quick and coordinated."

F1.17 -“Farmer doesn't have time to handle customer questions about farm shares."

O2.12 -“There has to be relationships or trust to support farm boxes as compared to one-time purchases."

Affinity Theme #3

Deficiency of connection between farmers and customers.

F1.29 -“We want to expand services. The goal is to have as many customers as possible."

F1.13 -“We believe that the CSA is a good story for people."

O3.6 - “The tool should be designed based on farmers’ schedule, plan and preference, so that they can spend the rest of the time focusing on farming."

Affinity Theme #4

Farmers don't have proper marketing tools to reach out to customers.

C1.4 - “Not being able to pick your produce is challenging but exciting."

C3.19 - “My biggest cooking time is around the weekend but I receive box on Tuesday."

C2.09 - “The single share is sizable but not a whole week's worth of food."

Affinity Theme #5

The need of addressing customer needs via personalized experiences.

C3.10 -“I go to their website often when I didn't know what was in the box but it wasn't very helpful. I just did a Google Search and confirmed."

C3.27 - “I think the recipes make a big difference - few people would eat all of things in the box raw."

Affinity Theme #6

Customers need help with ways to deal with produce.

Ray the Small Farm Owner

Running single CSA farms with subscription-based CSAs (40 - 80 members)

"Small farms like mine don't have resources for Marketing or IT."

"I have no idea where our customers are from, what they like or don't like."

“Farmers don’t like messing around on their laptops/phones, they might be on it once a week.”

Ray is a farmer who manages "Sunkissed Farms" in Macon, GA and runs a CSA of about 65 customers. He is not a technology person and is not managing his farm using latest technologies. His time is mostly spent on farm. Ray's wife, also a farmer, helps craft a good newsletter often showing what's happening on the farm and good recipes to go with the upcoming produces.

Goals

Needs a guaranteed market of consumers and want to retain the members of his CSA
Wants to improve the organization, planning and increase the efficiency of farming activities
Have the resources to support more customers

Pain Points

Cannot manage entire farm operations, marketing, and produce delivery as a single person
Finds it hard to manage people's food preferences with produce variety and seasonality in a highly manual manner
difficult to expand because don't know where customers come from

Judy the Mom

of a Upper middle class family living in Maryland Suburban areas

"It's been really key for us eating healthier."

"Some produces don't last long and you have to use them soon. The planning is important."

Goals

Eat healthily at home
No Leftovers
Support the local community by sharing their shares if possible
Find the best recipes for all kinds of produces
Have the resources to support more customers

Pain Points

Often find unfamiliar produces in the box and need to research on them
Hard to finish all of the produces
Sometimes often get extra one type of produce (squash)a guaranteed market of consumers and want to retain the members of his CSA
Wants to improve the organization, planning and increase the efficiency of farming activities

Ideation

Explore solutions that solve the pain points for our targeted problem statement & personas

Design Tenets

Instill Trust with Information

Inspire Community

Save Admin Time

Reduce Touchpoints

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Ideation Process

Crazy 8's

Group ideas to main clusters

We elaborated on the ideas based on the categories of the clusters and came up with the following ideas:

Discovery Platform
Community Forum Portal
Produce Management
Game and play related idea

We rated the 4 ideas based on the following criteria

Impact
Feasibility
Engagement
Learnability
Expandability

Following the user-centric path, we revisited our research synthesis and gathered input from stakeholders.

Stakeholder Feedback
Go back to user journey and affinity themes

Decision Making

Portal can support farmers with the farm operation in customer registration and box distribution.

Portal can be the main channel for information sharing and connection building through Farm Update and Survey functionalities.

Portal can provide better customer experiences by allowing customized/ personalized services.

Portal can also take care of the end stages of customer journey through functionalities like Pickup/Delivery, Recipes, and Renewal.

We ended up moving forward with the CSA portal idea.
Because..

Design the Portal

We took a iterative process



Design Process

What's in the tool/platform?

Box Management

What's in my box?
When will I get my box?
Where/how will I receive my box?
Something came up, can I skip a box?

Customer Information

How can I report address changes to my farm?
How can I securely update payment information?
How can I cancel or renew my subscription?

Community & Communication

As a customer, I have questions about my subscription
As a customer, how can I share my thoughts on the produce?

Education & Personal Impact

As a customer, I want to avoid food waste
As a customer, I want to know more about stories behind the food I get.
As a customer, I want to learn about new varieties of food.
As a customer, I want to know how I support local farms

Box Management

What's in the next farm box and how can I communicate the information to my customers?
How do I get boxes ready before the next delivery/pickup day?
How do I handle incoming customer request for this week's boxes?

Customer Information

How can I keep track of new customer information and information updates?
How can I manage my customers' subscription information?

Community & Communication

As a farmer, how can I get feedback on a regular basis?
As a farmer, how can I share my farm's updates and stories to the CSA members?

Sales and marketing of CSA

As a farmer, I want to get insights into my sales.
How do I prepare for the CSA marketing and new customer attraction in order to expand my CSA?

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Key Functionalities

Onboarding

This flow is designed for the user scenario of existing CSA customers getting onboard the portal.

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Key Functionalities

Homepage

We designed the homepage to be an integrated place for any information updates inside the portal.

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Key Functionalities

Box Management

For customers, box management allows them to see what's in their upcoming boxes, set up pickup or delivery, and swap produces that they don't want.

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Key Functionalities

Community

We hope that besides building the connection between customers and farmers, we could also help with strengthen the relationships between customers in a CSA community.



Key Functionalities

Direct Messages

Most conversations between customers and farmers happen through Email according to our stakeholder interviews. To make customer experience more streamlined, Direct Messaging is embedded to allow customers reaching out to farmers directly.

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Key Findings

Overall

Participants were able to understand the concept of CSA portal and found it easy to use.

Information Needs

Participants mentioned additional information that they're curious to know such like quantity of produces, deadline of making changes, profiles of members/farmers, etc.

Usability Issues

Ambiguous wording;
Information hierarchy and density;
"How can I go back?";
"Who are these people?"
"I prefer minimum information on the homepage"

Community Engagement

Participants expressed their reluctancies on actually posting to the Community Board, saying "I can imagine there will only be a group of people who are really active."

Direct Messaging

We noticed that participants were confused about the scope of direct messaging, and thought it's for both members and farmers.

Aha!

“I love the concept of a portal. It makes the overall membership more intimate, and that’s what the community side of CSA provides beyond just a subscription box.”

Aha!

“Is there a way to customize the dashboard? I'd prefer minimal information especially when you just want to come here and check.”

Aha!

“I'll look at the messages sent to Community Board, but I don't think I'll post anything. It's just not what I do.”



Key Findings

Considering the Real-World Situations

CSA operations are very practical in terms of how farmers distribute the farm boxes to their members.

Balance the Needs between Farmers' and Customers'

The design should balance the information and flexibility needs from the customer side with the efficiency/feasibility from farmers' side.

Take care of the late stages of customer experience

Customer Experience after receiving their boxes is Also Really Important.

Aha!

“At the pickup location you can just take things out from your box and get what's instead from the swap box.”

Aha!

“It might be hard for farmers to sort customized boxes for customers, cause you have some crazy logistics problems when managing 70 to 80 boxes.”

Aha!

“You just get what you get, even though you don’t like it. Hopefully there’s a good recipe to make you like the produce. ”



Final Design

All-inclusivity - Aggregate information in one place (Box information, Newsletter, Surveys, Q&A)

Direct customer to farmer channel

CSA box information transparent and quickly accessed by customers

Give and receive feedback on CSA boxes

Allows customer to manage their own box and let farmers know automatically w/o going through email threads

Customers have a history of all their previous boxes

Instead of making changes to each type of produces, we provide the options of skipping or donating the whole box, considering farmers' workload and real user scenarios.

Green Grove Farm CSA members can post their thoughts on latest boxes, share a newly explored recipe, or look for a member to take their next box.

Users can learn statistics relevant to their own CSA journeys.

Encourage commitment and foster a sense of community.

Reduce Touchpoints

Take the late stages of customer journey into consideration

Recipe feature is very important considering the nature of CSA boxes.

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Project Takeaway

CSA in general

We learned a lot about this business model, its origins and development over the years. It definitely led us to think about how we're deeply connected with the food we eat, and inspired us to shop produces more consciously and ethically.

Breaking down a complex ecosystem into a simplified experience

As user research and secondary research evolved, we collected a substantial amount of data. Utilizing appropriate design methods helped us synthesize the information and establish principles to guide following ideation and design.

Balancing the needs of different stakeholders

In this project, for instance, we addressed customers' and farmers' conflicts in needs by informing customers about the many responsibilities farmers bear to foster understanding and empathy toward the farmers.

Keeping real-life situations in mind when digitizing traditional models

During usability testing, we realized that some digital features actually added more complexity to the system. This made us realize the importance of in-person & physical interactions. A smooth and pleasant experience requires a thorough consideration of both digital and physical touch points.

Thanks for making this far!

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