What I Did
- Designed three prototypes of the site and a three prototypes of the interactive map
- Ran two usability tests and created two usability test reports
- Assisted the camera crew in Cuba with their equipment
- Tools Used: Figma
The Need: To Raise Awareness of a Farmer and Artist’s Philosophy
Hector Correa believes that the man only needs two things to be happy: art and agriculture. Both of these feed the stomach and the soul. Correa’s farm is called “La Finca Coincidencia” (The Coincidental Farm). He named it this because he finds it a wonderful coincidence that his family farms and makes art.
The Correas wish to share this philosophy with the world. However, there are not enough creative professionals in Cuba to meet their needs. They do not want to sell groceries on their website. They do not want to lead more visitors to come and disrupt their way of life either. All they want is to show the world the connection between food, art, and the earth.
The Website
My Interactive Media graduate program sends down teams of students for a week every year to work with non-profits in Latin America.
This week is spend collecting B-roll and interview footage for promotional videos. Once we come back from our trips, we complete all of the post-production for the videos and the organization’s new website in two weeks.
As I was designing the Correa’s site, my main goal was to make it simple enough to load quickly on Cuba’s slow broadband speeds. I also wanted it to look appealing enough to intrigue global site visitors.
The Process
While we were filming in Matanzas, Cuba, I assisted the camera crew. In between helping the camera crew test their equipment, I sketched multiple iterations of site layouts and UI elements.
I made sketches inspired by my surroundings on the farm at first. However, I simplified my ideas once I experienced Cuba’s internet speed. Our web developer also wanted us to stick closer to Bootstrap’s documentation to speed up the coding of the site.
Once we returned from Cuba, we organized the information architecture of the site and I transformed my sketches into Figma prototypes.
Two weeks is the shortest amount of time I ever had to do a formal usability test (let alone two), so I found it to be a thrilling challenge.
I conducted my first usability test to ensure the basic layout of the website didn’t have any major problems before we added more media to it. I also did this so our web developer could continue the rough code draft.
The test found that the font size and buttons for the website were too small (especially on mobile).I conducted a second usability test once I fixed these issues and added new features.
I made the second usability test was an A/B test. I did this because my team couldn’t agree on if there should be photographs inside of the headers or the backgrounds. I also tested the new interactive map of the farm and the overall usability of the site.
Overall, the users preferred the photographs inside of the headers and felt this was more organized than having them inside of the backgrounds.
Small buttons were still the biggest issue for the mobile versions of the map and the website. Many users kept trying to pinch-and-zoom on the screen in order to make them larger.
After showing my team the usability test report, we agreed to split the buttons on mobile to two rows of three so they could be larger and easier to test.
The Results
After we completed the project, only the professors have been able to access the server for the website. Once we can access it again, we will add the Google Analytics tracking code I made for the site. I will update this section once I get information from that.
Featured Image: Mockup PSD created by rawpixel.com – www.freepik.com
