Our crit helped inform where we should take our solution next.
We got some really valuable feedback during the critique today, both on our process and our ultimate solution. I was really encouraged that we got positive feedback specifically about our problem space, as we spent so much time and intention around framing that correctly.
However, from our group's post-critique discussion it feels like we have a long way to go in terms of final deliverable. Although GroMobile was a valiant first attempt to combine a lot of disparate ideas into a single basic concept, we now begin the process of iteration.
We decided to flesh out different persona's and tailor the GroMobile to their experience illustrated through a user journey. Our goal with this activity is to allow us to flesh out the specific ways in which we hope that this problem will help users. From there, we can tease out the specific ways that our solution would work, and who it would work for, so that we can build upon our original ideas and improve them.
The user group I'm going to focus on is low income city dwellers. Since we decided we were going to focus on the challenge of food production in cities, I have been curious about how that solution would work for low income families. I am eager to create something that can also help to resolve the challenges of food deserts and the links between poverty and obesity.
Food deserts in cities are places where there is limited access to healthy, fresh, affordable food. Think lower income high population density zones with a lot of fast food restaurants and not very many grocery stores. This is a real challenge that affects many people and makes it even harder for a single working mom to ensure her children are eating healthy foods.
I'm more familiar with the US experience than the UK experience, but from my cursory research , it seems to be just as challenging here as in the US. It's further complicated by the fact that lack of access to healthy foods is a good predictor for diseases like obesity and diabetes.
For the next few days I will be researching the experiences of low income city dwellers trying to eat healthfully. The insights I gain from this research will inform the creation of a persona and a user journey illustrating the primary use-case.
