Uptown Fresh
Virtual Farmer's Market and Grocery Delivery
The Basics
Institution - Maryland Institute College of Art
Team - 4 Master's Students
Time - 8 Weeks
My Role - Visual Designer
The Problem
With the current state of the U.S. during a global pandemic, grocery shopping behaviors have drastically changed. While competing platforms allow users the option to pick up their pre-shopped grocery items or get them delivered to their door, consumers know less about where their goods come from.
Uptown Fresh will give customers the ability to not only shop from their neighborhood grocery stores, but also shop directly from local farmers, addressing any concerns on where their food is coming from and how fresh it actually is. Our prototype will focus on this new environment in the app and how a customer would interact with this new feature.
Users + Audience
As part of my research, I created an overview of the target audience. Knowing the goals and pain points of our user types will assist us in gaining a better understanding of the problem and how to solve it.
Design Process
After gaining a better understanding of our users, I started drawing out key frames in the user flow and basic elements of the design system.
Based on these initial sketches, I created a set of mid-fidelity wireframes using Figma to map out the bare-bones of the app. Doing this helped me to identify patterns and the overall look of the interface.
Branding
Creating a sense of familiarity within a design system that has not previously been exposed to the user is not about making the design system similar to an existing product but entirely focused on making a product that the user can relate to. For Uptown Fresh, our goal is to bring familiarity of the local farmer’s market to the user’s front door.
Within the design system, I first brought our attention to the color palette. We settled on bright and elating colors like grapefruit and chartreuse balanced out with deep navy and lavender toned gray.
I was able to maintain a font system while only relying on three fonts. Utilizing sizes and weights has made it possible to maintain a cohesive font visual while meeting the user’s expectations for reading comfortability. Rather than having a stark black for our main font, I let the dark navy function as our main font color choice. This combination is comfortable to the eye and achieves the goal of a multi-purposed color choice being presented on different backgrounds.
User Interface
Home Screen
Vendor Sub Category (Local Farms)
Vendor (Webers Farm)
Item Page
Cart
Order Placement
Select Delivery Time
Select Delivery Driver
Driver Review Drop Down
Order Confirmed
Account Menu
Help Center
Accessibility
Retrospective
Being my first app build from the ground up, I had a hard time breaking the design down into atomic elements. Once the initial research was conducted, I thought I was ready to go full-throttle into the prototyping process and didn't fully acknowledge the importance of breaking down the design elements and setting up the design system.
This system has been crucial to the final product. The design system allowed us to have cohesive branding and create a sense of familiarity within the product. I was also interested in building out element that are outside of our original scope, like the accessibility menu, quick add feature, like button, and help center. This allowed me to create exposure for myself to other elements within the product as well as better my skills with prototyping.
This system has been crucial to the final product. The design system allowed us to have cohesive branding and create a sense of familiarity within the product. I was also interested in building out element that are outside of our original scope, like the accessibility menu, quick add feature, like button, and help center. This allowed me to create exposure for myself to other elements within the product as well as better my skills with prototyping.
In future case studies, I hope to further develop my ability to create a clean and effective design. Overall, I highly enjoyed working on this project.