Memory Garden: Cultivating Lasting Moments
August 2019 – December 2019
In Cornell’s UX and Software Development Studio course, I gained practical experience applying design and coding principles as well as human-computer interaction methods. We were asked to examine the Ithaca Farmers Market, a member-run cooperative with more than 160 active farmers and vendors from the Ithaca area.
My team’s capstone project for the course was Memory Garden, a fully functioning progressive web application built using the Vue.js and Node.js frameworks. It allows users to complete challenges and catalog memories of their time at the Farmers Market.
Over the course of the semester, we conducted user research, designed an interface, built a working prototype, and conducted user testing. Keep scrolling to see the full process!
The market first opened in 1973 as a venue for local vendors to sell goods. It rapidly expanded and quickly became an Ithaca tradition.
The market is only open seasonally, but typically attracts well over 5,000 people a day.
Discovery and Exploration
Contextual Interviews
We performed semi-structured interviews of Farmers Market patrons, Cornell students and faculty, and other Ithaca residents to try and identify a problem space where we could intervene to improve the Ithaca Farmers Market experience. By asking questions directly, we have the opportunity to ask participants to clarify their answers (if they were vague) to deeper understand why they behave the way they do at the farmer's market. Semi-structured interviews also provide the flexibility for us to delve into new topics or issues that come up over the course of the in-person interviews. We chose not to do field studies because of the concern that patrons might change their behavior if they know they are being watched.
Cornell Swim Team
User summary: Four female undergraduate Cornell students sitting at a table before practice. They are two sophomores and two seniors. They go to the Farmers Market spontaneously, and only go a handful of times per season. They typically spend around two to three hours at the farmers market when they do go. They go for the brunch options, and to enjoy the sunshine while sitting around the dock.
What was learned: These users have specific things they go to the Farmers Market for (e.g. cinnamon rolls). Frustrations include long lines and payment methods. Despite these frustrations, they still enjoy the atmosphere and scenery of the farmers market.
Ithaca Residents
User summary: Two female Ithaca residents sitting on the dock at the farmer's market. They have been frequenting the market regularly for years and enjoy going for brunch or local produce. They typically spend several hours at the farmer's market meandering, eating, and chatting with each other.
What was learned: Ithaca residents aren't rushed at the farmer's market but avoid crowds when possible. They tend to emphasize the positive aspects of the famers market since they've been going so long (more than 10 years in this case) and have so many fond memories of it.
Professor Jery Stedinger
User Summary: Jery has been living in Ithaca for several decades and has worked in Cornell's College of Engineering for 42 years. He is very familiar with local history and knows about nearly everything Ithaca has to offer.
What was learned: Some Ithaca residents do not visit the market very frequently (usually 2 or 3 times a year). This user's favorite things about the market were the Ithaca souvenirs (paintings, woodworking) and unique foods like Belgian waffles, which he had very strong memories of despite not visiting the market within the past year.
Affinity Diagramming
Clusters & Insights
Reasons for visiting: Atmosphere, Friends, Niceties
People enjoy the scenic atmosphere, nice weather, local vendors, making positive memories. These memories can become hazy and unclear with time.
People like going with their friends and socializing.
High quality groceries and yummy food.
Navigation
Website: some use it, some do not. When used, mostly for checking logistics (where / when).
Physical pathfinding (at the market): most people do not have a concrete strategy. Prefer to wander around, not in a rush. Meandering.
Issues: ATM/Money, Parking, Crowdedness, Vendor communication, Time
Most people know they need to bring cash, but often forget. Usually someone with them will pay in cash.
Finding parking is a huge inconvenience.
People hate waiting in line. A busy farmer’s market can feel nice, but means long lines and waiting times. People will give up on a line / purchase.
Vendor presence at the market is inconsistent.
Being at the market is time-consuming.
Key problem identified: memory fade
People have great memories of the Ithaca farmers market but no concrete way to document and reminisce about them. Because of this, good memories can become hazy or even forgotten over time.
We had initially focused on crowdedness and vendors changing unexpectedly as our key problems, but changed our focus due to instructor feedback about scope of the assignment.
Persona: Mary, age 34
Mary is an Ithaca resident who has been living in the area for the past six years and values her community. She goes to the farmer's market around five times a year without planning much beforehand. Mary is very comfortable and familiar with the farmers market and knows her way around interacting with different booths and activities. She spends on average two hours with her friend to have a leisurely brunch, select fresh produce, and engage with the community there. She always has her phone on her in case she needs to get in touch with her friend remotely or look something up on the Internet. Sometimes when Mary is wandering around the Farmers Market, she wants to remember times when she was there years ago, but the pictures she took at the time are no longer on her phone. However, as much as she enjoys the farmers market, her memories of it tend to fade or become hazy over time. It is these memories and moments that she wants to improve her recollection of, as well as cultivate new memories that she can reminisce about later.
Main goal: Mary wants to retain her positive memories of the farmers market and seek out new things to do (i.e. make new memories) at the same time.
Design & Evaluation
One of our challenges in the class was to implement persuasive design with our design solution. We first identified the target behavior that we wanted to influence: how people both create and cherish their memories. After brainstorming, we arrived at a design concept:
A PWA that encourages people to document memories as well as make new ones
Take various “activities” that users mentioned are enjoyable and memorable, and turn them into a list of “tasks” for our users to complete, while having them take a picture in the process.
This method of suggestion will help users be able to capture and collect memories, while giving them opportunities to become more immersed in the special community that is formed within the farmers market.
Our persuasive design was based on the Fogg Behavioral Model, which states that people are persuaded based on two things: ability and motivation. Ability-wise, our app makes it easy to take a snapshot of an event by tapping into the user’s laptop/smartphone camera. Motivation-wise, people are drawn to collecting things and it is a way to store their cherished memories.
Sketches and Paper Prototypes
We went through several iterations of sketching, whiteboarding, and paper prototyping.
Usability Testing
We tested three users by asking them to perform tasks using the paper prototypes.
User 1 results:
Understood use of garden as an analogy for a photo album, but struggled with initial concept and understanding of challenges and how to view completed challenges.
User 2 results:
Found the app fairly simple in complexity, almost to a point the user wished there was more information. For Task 2, wanted to know more, such as a map for vendor location, what vendors are at the market.
User 3 results:
Was most confused about concept of a garden to keep photos. Would have rather used her own camera app to capture photos of the experience and not be limited by the scope of challenges.
These findings informed the creation of our wireframes and prototypes.
Figma Wireframe
Our main wireframe after several rounds of iteration in Figma. Users of our app encounter two main screens: the flower garden, and the challenges list. Our users cherish their memories of the Farmer's Market, but over time they tend to fade. With our app, they are encouraged to explore new things at the Farmer's Market and then record those memories via the challenges list. Afterwards, those memories live on as flowers in their garden.
Final Implementation
The final stage of our project (though it began in parallel to earlier stages) was to program our app using the Vue JavaScript framework.
Architecture
We architected our app based on our knowledge of Vue’s Component and View structure. Each “Flower” memory is a component within the “Gallery” view, and each “Challenge” task is a component within the “Challenges” view.
Pseudocode
Our app was designed to use initial “seed data” in order to get the user started. We ran into technical challenges with dynamically rendered gallery content because unlike user-generated data, the seed data is not kept in browser storage. We had to rewrite our gallery algorithm to simultaneously access a local JSON file as well as pull from the Web Storage API.