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Last Plants
Creating Last Plants, a plant-based food app, designed to prevent food waste
ROLE
UX Research, Information Architecture, UX Design, UI Design, motion design
RESEARCH METHODS
Desk research, user interviews, Usability testing
TOOLS
Figma, Figjam, Miro, Keynote
TIMEFRAME
2 months
Objective
Design a vegan food-sharing app that makes plant-based living more accessible and reduces food waste.
Problem
Last Plants' USP compared to other food apps is its emphasis on sustainability. This comes with challenges because users are more skeptical towards eco claims than ever.
Key goals
Understand users’ true needs, frustrations, and skepticisms in order to create a product that truly serves communities and the environment while reducing food waste.
DISCOVER
DEFINE
DESIGN
DELIVER
Research project goal
Competitor analysis
Desk research
Questionnaire
Affinity mapping
User personas
Problem statements
Hypothesis statements
Wireframe sketches
Lo-fi to Mid-fi
Usability testing
Design iterations
High fidelity prototype
Style guide
Accessibility summary
Key takeaways
The Process
Using a Double Diamond framework
In order to structure and streamline the end-to-end UX design process
Discover
INITIAL DESK RESEARCH
I started the UX research project with some initial desk research to gauge current user attitudes towards environmental issues, plant-based diets, and engagement with eco products.
Most notably, I found eco anxiety is on the rise among the UK public.
CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS
Due to this trend, my prediction was that numbers of those following plant based diets would have increased proportionately because this is a simple way for individuals to reduce thier impact on the climate.
However, further desk research uncovered that only a small portion of the population identify as 100% plant-based.
THE NEED FOR QUALITATIVE DATA
This quantitative data posed an array of questions:
Why aren’t people eating more plant-based food? Are they too overwhelmed with climate anxiety? Or are there other barriers to adoption? How can the Last Plants app reduce these barriers?
To avoid assumption bias and better understand our users’ core feelings and motivations, I conducted an online survey with 10 questions and 40 respondents.
QUESTIONIARRE PURPOSE AND FOCUS
We needed to understand the reasons people do and do not choose plant-based food, sustainable products, brands, and habits.
The purpose of the survey was to gain insight into how the app should look, feel, and serve users so that it will be helpful and self-aware enough to gain trust and ongoing user engagement.
SCREENER QUESTIONS
The screener question ensured all respondents were old enough to use the app (18+), based in the UK where the app will launch, and at least somewhat interested in occasionally eating plant-based food.
To reduce the likelihood of confirmation bias and get a balanced perspective, I made sure to recruit a diverse participant pool of not just vegans and vegetarians but also flexitarians and omnivores
SURVEY QUESTIONS
To avoid leading question bias and capture more context from each respondent, most of the survey's response options were open text boxes.
While this freedom can be off-putting to some survey respondents, the unorthodox approach meant that even short responses were more value than a multiple choice response because they were entirely user-led.
Define
TRUST-WORTHY MESSAGING
CONVENIENT & ENTICING
A COMMUNITY MISSION
RELIABLE NUTRITION INFO
CONTEXT SENSITIVITY
HOPE & POSITIVITY
Collating responses from the questionnaire into an affinity map, I determined six key priorities for the app design.
ENVIRONMENTALISM
HEALTH & FITNESS
ANIMAL WELFARE
BUDGETTING
While the affinity map above focuses more on constructive feedback and the "push" factors away from veganism, the questionairre also uncovered the positive or "pull" factors that draw people towards plant-based food. These include:
While Last Plants aims to appeal to all users, vegetarians and vegans are the apps core target audience. To be truly user focused, the UX design needed to prioritise their needs first, and also weave in broader user requirements.
Based on these themes, I produced four user personas to centre throughout the design process:
The next step was to combine insights from the affinity map and target customer personas to come up with design ideas. This was challenging as each insight sparked numerous suggestions. To focus on meeting the most important user needs, I created an A1 mind map of ideas, then boiled it down to an A4 page, and then finally to an A5 note. Below are the six priorities that remained.
Design priorities
DECIDING WHERE TO FOCUS FIRST
P0 - Include a social feed feature that allows local communities to share food items amongst themselves.
P0 - Add an impact tracker to gamify the experience
P0 - User ratings: allow, encourage and make reviews easily accessible to browsers.
P0 - enable in-depth food filters, accounting for distance, price, and all major dietary requirements
P0 - Use inclusive, friendly, and trustworthy language, colours, and imagery.
P0 - Be food-forward. Create a photo-led format that enables restaurants to boast their delicious options.
Design
SOCIO-ECONOMIC DISPARITY
The usability study found that users on strict budgets were disillusioned by discovering different prices within each restaurant profile page. To fix this, on the “discover” and “browse” pages, a drop down menu was added enabling users to compare specific bag options and their corresponding prices from there, saving time and money.
4.6
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Collect today 10:00 - 21:00
Surprise bag
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PHYSICAL DISABILITY AND TIME BARRIERS
One of the app’s USPs is the ability to do good deeds for neighbours near you, who may have physical disabilities or other barriers to using the app, (e.g. being time poor).
Therefore, ensuring travel distances were clearly displayed was crucial — this makes it easier and more appealing for able-bodied users to recognise and help people close by.
DIETARY RESTRICTIONS
The concept of “health food” varies greatly, depending on people’s specific dietary needs. After the usability study where some respondents had struggled to find foods they deemed as being good for them, further dietary filter options were added, such as “Low FODMAP”, “Soy-Free”, “Low-Carb”, “Gluten Free”, and more.
Accessibility centred design
Deliver
STYLE GUIDE
For consistency across the entire app, all symbols have the same line weight to size ratio. These components were scaled up and down depending on the context, and a great variety of symbols were required due to area-specific pages which contained lists. For example, the ‘Earnings and money saved’ page required different varieties of money and sales symbols to distinguish categories.
The badges were designed to reward restaurants for their most notable offerings, as deemed by customers. This gamifies the experience for both sides, while also guiding and incentivising restaurants on how and where they could improve. These components had to be interactive - allowing users to select and change the colour of three badges of their choosing.
BRAND LOGO DESIGN
User research found that many potential users held some negative preconceptions about environmentalists as being aggressive. This is why it was important the thistle design remained approachable and soft, despite depicting a prickly flower.
I kept the design simple to ensure scalability and versatility, maintaining clarity across digital platforms, from app icons to social media. Using the brands’ primary and secondary colours, the logo passes all colour blindness texts, visible from every trichromatic view.
INTERACTIVE LOGO DESIGN
For future marketing purposes, the logo has been strategically designed to seamlessly transition into various other brand visuals in short animations. These will all be relevant to environmental topics.
Potential animations: the top leaves and stem turn into a wind turbine. The flower changes into the brand’s tertiary orange palette to look like the sun. And the lower leaves turn into lightning bolts.
The bulk of this project took place in the research phase and to me, this highlighted the importance of research. Whether this is agile or in-depth, it must be accurate.
Project takeaways
Quality insights, audience understanding, and strategy have a huge impact on the rest of the UX design process and can save time in every phase down the line.
The end result is a targeted, well-matched resource to truly help people, communities and the planet. This is exaclty the kind of work I will be proud to continue.
