The brief
Two hundred plot holders, one greenhouse, one rotavator, and a paper diary that lived in a shed. Bookings were lost weekly and the arguments outlasted the season.
Role: Product design, prototyping, front-end
Process
- Sat in the shed on three Saturdays and watched people use the diary, which is where the real rules turned up
- Prototyped in paper first, because half the committee did not want an app and needed to see it was not one
- Shipped a single page that works on a five-year-old phone with one bar of signal, since that is the actual context
Outcome
Bookings moved online in one season without a training session. The diary still lives in the shed, now unused, which the committee insisted on.
What I would change
The hardest part was not the interface. It was writing rules that eleven people would agree were fair, then making the interface obey them exactly.