seasonaleaty Team Members / Role Problem and Solution Overview Storyboards for Interface Designs

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1 seasonaleaty Team Members / Role Rishi Goutam - Development / Documentation Richard Pan - Group Manager / Video Sue Jeong - Design Chantal Murthy - Testing and usability URL: Problem and Solution Overview Consumers are able to buy the foods they want year round but at the cost of less tasty, less nutritious, and more expensive produce items. Places that sell locally grown food are not always easy to find and often, consumers are forgetful about how long their favorite produce items are in-season and are unable to compare prices from multiple locations. Seasonaleaty aims to help consumers buy foods that are both in-season and locally grown by showing directions to where consumers can buy local foods, showing price comparisons of produce items at each location and allowing users to see a list of seasonal foods and the length of time they have left before their season comes to an end. Storyboards for Interface Designs Following are three storyboards for three different interface designs. We came up with a gamebased interface, a community-based interface, and an interface based on information/knowledge presentation.

2 Game-based interface Community-based Interface

3 Knowledge-provider Interface

4 Selected Interface Design

5 Interface Choice and Reasoning With interface ideas centered around knowledge-provider design, community involvement, and game / badge system, we selected the interface design emphasizing community input on local food selection. The community-centered design was chosen in order to bring more value to the user by creating an environment where users can participate in helping others make smart local food buys. Showing food provider testimonials allows more connection with farmers and can help make informative suggestions concerning the user s selection of a local food item based off of viewing popular items and locations other users have purchased at. We contrasted the community oriented design with the game / point based system that encourages user participation in mini-competitions for purchasing a certain type or quantity of a local food. However, we reasoned to capture user interest, it would be more efficacious to provide feedback from the actual community regarding validity of information at provider sites and produce quality. In addition, it would not necessarily be in the user s interest to buy items they have no preference for just for getting an achievement in an application. We considered integrating both the game and community functionalities, but figured that would make for a cluttered interface, since users who are interesting in connecting with the community and receiving human feedback, generally aren t as inclined to derive as much pleasure from feedback from an artificially intelligent system. Functionality The community-oriented interface design allows for functionality concerning helping connect users and allow them to witness which places are good to shop at or which produce items are recommended through each other. We wish to add a grocery list feature based off of our CI results from interviewing Namrata Panda, who approached shopping in a way that allowed her to buy based off of a planned meal. The grocery list feature makes sense in the context of a local food application and would be valuable as a function. With the community design, the application continues to provide functionality in displaying directions to a specified grocery / farmers market for buying local food, displaying a list of local produce items in season, and allowing price comparison between locations. Adding a community aspect allows users to see which locations or produce items are popular at any given moment and see reviews for a given location. User Interface Description 1: Identification of local produce A food item can be searched by time left in seasonality by state, category, or keyword. The search results for the item will be displayed in either a list format, or a map format. The list format will show foods and corresponding providers, ranked by price as well as community rating regarding food freshness, availability, and ease of purchase. The map format will graphically display the locations of nearby providers of the desired food, color-coded by either the price or rating (the user can toggle this). 2: Directions to destination to buy local produce After selecting a food and location for purchase, the user can find driving directions from their current location. If a location is selected such that the duration of time open is shorter than driving

6 time, other nearby locations that have longer business hours will be recommended. The user can bring up the map to display a set of directions to their destination and be able to use it while driving or for looking up before setting out to buy groceries. 3: Grocery list feature: Allowing identification of multiple produce types This feature will permit the user to add desired local foods to their grocery list. This will enable the user to search for a location that optimizes coverage of foods on their grocery list as well as the total price of the foods on the list, rather than the user searching for a market based on a single food and its price. When the grocery list is empty, the user will need to add at least one item to proceed and find locations as in the first functionality outlined, resulting in identical performance to searching for a single food by price, rating and location. 4: Price comparision This feature can be reached upon searching for specific items in the application s search box. Queries matching a produce item brings the user to a screen that displays a list of locations that sell the specific item. Additional information includes how many stars the location has been rated, distance to the location, and a symbol that indicates the price difference between each place. A filter button at the bottom of the screen allows the user to sort the list by a certain category (price, stars, distance to location). The user will be able to make use of this by seeing which location is ideal to shop at and use it to influence where they go. Refined Storyboards for Scenarios

7 Task 1: Look up list of local produce and how long they re in-season for Task 2: Price check specific local produce item Task 3: Directions to destination to buy local produce Script [Inside house, playing chess] 2: Hey, dude, do you have any fruit? 1: Yeah, right on the countertop. [1 moves chess pieces around] 2: What happened to these strawberries? [1 comes in scene] 1: I bought them a few days ago but they weren't that fresh and I don't think they're currently in season. 2: Maybe you should try buying local. 1: What's in season right now? 2: Well, let's see. [pulls out phone] Looks like pears are in-season. 1: Do you know how long they are in season? 2: Yeah, looks like they're in season for only another week. 1: Hmm we should probably go get some then. 1: Pears are kinda expensive though. Where's a good place to buy them? 2: Well, let's take a look at who's selling them. [looks at phone] There are a few farmers markets in Fremont, Pike Place, and Ballard. Looks like Fremont's the cheapest.

8 1: Awesome, let's go there. [Inside the car. Theme music] 1: So I just realized I don't know where the market is. 2: It's cool; I can find us directions through seasonaleaty. 1: Alright, let's get us some pears. [Drive back shot] [Back inside the house, playing chess, eating pears] 1: These pears are really fresh. 2: Yeah, that's why you buy local. [Fade to black, pause] 1: Checkmate! Concept Video Description Making the video We first wrote a script narrating the usage of the application in a casual, realistic setting. We filmed the sequence starting with identification of a desired food, price comparison of the food across locations, and finding driving directions to the optimal location. We then demarcated each of these tasks by change in setting. The motivation for identifying a food, the first task, was depicted amidst a game of chess and the desire for an afternoon snack. The second task of price comparison of the intended choice, pears, was highlighted by a dialogue in the kitchen. The third task was filmed outside the house and inside the car, signifying intent of as the users to immediately act on the information provided in the app and proceed to purchase the local food at the highlighted location. Interesting Filming Techniques We utilized these following techniques to convey the use and functionality of our application: 1: Portraying use of the application in realistic setting We depicted the users in the midst of a game of chess, craving a tasty treat. The contrast between the user s high hopes of a succulent snack and the dismal state of the strawberries provided a good motivation for using our app to find local, fresh, in season foods. 2: Multiple camera angles We contrasted the use of various camera angles to add more interest to the video. The chess scene was filmed from a slightly elevated angle highlighting the involvement of the users in the game. The food selection/price comparison scene was depicted with a zoom out from the object of interest (the very spoiled strawberries), to highlight the importance and enjoyability of finding information to purchase local and fresh, before involving a dialogue regarding the use of the app. The scene involving finding directions and proceeding to purchase the in-local food, was made more immediate and practical through use of the outdoor and car scenes. 3: Mild humor We added a couple of humorous scenes to keep the audience entertained while delivering the information, namely an emphasis on the decomposing strawberries, song choice, and devious stealing of chess pieces.

9 Successes We enjoyed collaborating as a team to make the script and select the foods to be highlighted, and enjoyed the filming process overall. A big success was in storyboarding and writing up a script early on so that we were ready to go when we wanted to film. We thought about camera and actor positioning before taking shots and tried to incorporate as much of this into our storyboard and script as possible. Challenges While we enjoyed the filming process, we would have liked to add a few more features to accentuate the functionality of the app. While it would ve been nice to film at a farmers market or some place similar to provide realism to the application through factual information regarding locations and using the application in that sort of environment, weather and difficulty to film in a farmers market scenario made it impossible. The team members have little experience with filming and video editing, which led to more simplified scenes and camera shots. Video creation time Conceptualization We spent about 45 minutes designing the script and breakdown of the tasks in the video. We decided to write a script because we wanted to make sure we deliver every piece of information relevant to the application and our three tasks. Shooting We took about a few takes of each scene (playing chess, in the kitchen, and outdoors), and the overall time spent was about 60 minutes. Editing Editing was done using Windows Movie Maker due to a lack of editing software and knowledge about using such software. Since filming was done in an organized manner, trimming and editing clips did not take very long. Entire process from converting files to editing to exporting took 3 hours.