Design Concepts for Sustainability Victoria
Sustainability Victoria
I was asked to design an app for Sustainability Australia, with the hope to educate Australians on growing food at home, and providing recipes and cooking idea. Sustainability Victoria is a website dedicated to helping Victorian citizens transition to a circular, climate-resilient economy. Australia’s high rate of urbanisation means that most people experience a significant disconnect between their food production and consumption. Over the decades, suburban gardens have declined and Australians reportedly have a lacking understanding and appreciation of how their food is grown. But luckily statistics indicate this trend is changing. A large number of Australians need education on growing their own food, as well as recipe / cooking ideas to make good use of their newly harvested crop. Their audience is any Victorian who is climate conscious, or simply considering growing their own food.
Variations
The Sustainability Victoria executives wish to see 3 initial design concepts, each with their own variation before user research is conducted. The three design concept variations are a Context Variation, an Aesthetic Variation, and an Accessibility Variation.
Concept 1 — Context Variation
The first design concept must be catered only to Australians living in dense inner city urban areas with very little space to grow food.
Concept 2 — Aesthetic Variation
The second design concept must use the Photon design language (also called a design system) developed by Firefox. This design language focuses heavily on illustration, iconography and vibrant colours.
Concept 3 — Accessibility Variation
The third and final design concept must cater for visually impaired users — specifically users with low vision. These users require a higher contrast in the interface design, and struggle to read small font sizes and small iconography.
7 Step Framework
Before I could start my ideation on each of these variations, I first did a 7 step framework excersie. This simple framework consists of 7 steps, and as a result, solves a design challenge. It addresses the key questions and factors of a design, and helps designers in their design ideation process. This guide inspired the ideation for each variation of the app.
Ideation
I then began the ideation phase for each variation. The interface sketches that i did in the ideation phase were rough sketches of what some of the screens could potentially look like.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
From there I went on to design Low Fidelity Wireframes. These wireframes mapped out each screen with design annotations.
High Fidelity Mockups
From these wireframes, I chose the 4 most important screens and created High Fidelity Mockups for 4 of the main app screens. In these mockups I included Sustainability Victorias existing logo, branding colours, UI design and images.
Conclusion
From these wireframes and mockups of screens, I can then present the 3 variations to the client and they can decide on which is most appropriate for their goal and audience. These wireframes and mockups can then be used by me, the designer, to then create a prototype for the client, and design the clients desired app. This design then can achieve the goals and purposes outlined by the client, and benefit all future users.
