Little Village
Alexandra Livsey
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Little Village facilitates community connections through neighbourhood garden and produce sharing. The online platform makes it simple and straightforward for people to share their excess yard space and garden produce with members of their community. Little Village strives to promote community resiliency through the fostering of neighbour to neighbour relationships and sustainable food acquisition.
The Little Village website allows community members to easily post and respond to available produce or garden space listings in their neighbourhood.
The garden map makes it easy to find available garden space closest to you. Visitors can read details about local available gardens and can comment on a listing or email the lister directly. This map also provides details of currently existing garden shares to help newcomers.
Community members are invited to participate in Little Village through a mailed invitation containing info about the platform and a complimentary seed envelope. Using the QR code, invitees are led to a growing guide on the Little Village website to learn how to grow their seeds.
Little Village also provides the option for those interested in bringing garden and produce sharing to their community to become neighbourhood ambassadors. Neighbourhood ambassadors are provided with invitations and informational material in order to spread the word about Little Village and become a local point person.
DESIGN PROCESS
Interviews
Expert interviews were conducted in order to better understand how to mitigate inaccessibility to high quality, locally grown produce in Vancouver.
Competitive Analyses
Extensive research went into finding and comparing existing businesses and initiatives that work to increase access to locally grown produce.
Customer Journey Mapping
The customer journey of two main personas (someone with excess garden space and someone looking for garden space) were repeatedly drawn out and iterated on.
Role Playing
Role play exercises were designed to better understand what service features little village could potentially implement in order to make the steps between connecting online and starting a garden share easier for users. Two participants simulated online and real life conversations in relation to responding to a garden listing and coming to a garden share agreement.
Co-Creation Workshops
Two co-creation exercises were designed in the hopes of understanding how little village’s service offerings could be improved. In one workshop, participants were asked to provide a story and image that represented a recent positive experience with a neighbour. They were then asked to draw ways in which they would be incited to first learn about little village. In another workshop, participants were asked to write and draw out what they think would help simplify and make easier the process of starting a garden share.
Usability Testing
The prototype for the Little Village website was designed in Figma. The website went through a series of iterations driven by feedback from usability tests with prospective users. The prototype focused on two primary user flows – creating a garden post for the garden map and choosing and responding to a garden post on the garden map.
