Background

Honestly speaking I never understood nor empathized with the vegans, it alway seems superficial, so imagine my surprise when my cousin who I hadn't seen in a while told me she was vegan. Being an inquisitive person I had to probe, it was an epic debate. She gave me a brief insight into the lifestyle and struggles of Nigerian Vegans. I ended the discussion feeling a bit more empathy for members of the  community. So it inspired me to design something. 

The problem at hand

After speaking to more people in the community I was able to pinpoint some of the issues affecting the vegan community in Nigeria. They include but are not limited to:

• Finding good vegan based Food Recipes 
• connecting with the community.
• For new vegans, inconsistency in keeping to their vegan diet.
• Finding stores or restaurants  that sell vegan based food

Product vision and solution

From these findings, I decided solving the issue faced by this community would be best approached by creating an app that helps vegans in Nigeria do the following

• Vegans save and share recipes with other members of their community.
• Buy Vegan based Food from the online store.
• See and Setup meetups with other members of the community.
• Get daily health tips, for better living and also foods to avoid.
• Set goals and Show them the progress they have made.

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Organizing my thoughts

This was one my first major personal designs as a UI/UX Designer. As new UI/UX Designer, I didn't have access to a wide variety of user’s so I did my own user testing on my close friends. Of course, there's some bias there, but doing this allowed me to find major issues with a few important areas.

I broke this down into 3 parts: Store, Recipe section, and Community section. Breaking them up helped me focus on each individual area and its' issues. I compiled a customer journey using information I gathered from using the product and research I compiled from other products in solving similar issues.

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Trying out firsthand experiences with some of these products enabled me to note down the things they had done right and connected with my current understanding of why they had done it.

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Choreographing the User Experience 

Figuring out the flow

I tried creating a user journey to be used as my base model and research from other products solving similar problems as reference models. I wrote down key elements I believe would improve our ux experience. From here I could decide what actions and features were crucial and beneficial and designed a sitemap based on these conclusions.

I wanted to ensure a seamless experience.

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Wireframes

Wireframes help me focus on key functions, elements, and actions before starting the visual design. I created High-Fidelity wireframes using some dummy texts and icons where needed. It also helped me test out our new flow which I created with real users, and incorporated their feedback in final designs.

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High fidelity mockup

i created my high fidelity mockups in Figma and since it is a personal project, it was never developed because I don't have the funds to do that yet. So it is sitting pretty on a Figma file

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Takeways.

I am happy I was able to work on a project like this, I enjoyed every brainstorming and interview sessions with my friends as everyone was truly willing to give their sincere response and feedback throughout the entire design process. It was also a learning moment for me as i got to understand the vegan community more.
I learnt the following important takeaways from this project concerning product and business processes:

• Start small. It’s okay to start the journey to save the world from paper dependency from a single feature. Prioritise experience over features.
• Approach every designs like a scientist. When designing, ask questions like a child, do not start any design process with preconceived notions.

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