Week Two: Mon

First Wireframes

The home page of the website.

The scroll extension of the home page that contains links to other pages. This is inspired by the WealthSimple website that I looked at in my previous blog post. 

One of the pages set up for people to learn to grow a vegetable, I have used basil here but I may choose another vegetable or herb for the real thing. On this page it will have instructions for how to grow the plant, then recipe ideas as well as preservation tips maybe. This idea was given to me in a workgroup meeting where Andre suggested preservation tips so that people don't end up wasting the produce that they have grown. This was something I hadn't even thought about, because in my mind they wouldn't be growing large enough quantities to have waste.

Second Wireframes

The second page here is the extension of the home page. It's what you would find if you scrolled down.

I tested out my wireframes and my participant was first given the task of finding the recipe for "rosemary roasted vegetables".  The feedback given after completing the task was that when they clicked into the drop down menu, there was nothing that said 'recipes' and it wasn't obvious to them that 'recipes' would be underneath 'grow herbs at home'. So I need to have a separate tab for 'recipes' in that drop down menu. They also suggested keeping the contact information at the bottom of each page instead of having it's own space in the drop down menu.

In the second test the participant is tasked with finding out what kind of gas is released by vegetables that break down in a dump/landfill. The feedback I received from this test was that the participant would like to be able to scroll more on the homepage. They feel that most websites put the most important information on the homepage so it's the first thing you see and he feels that this is a really important thing for people to know.

It was also pointed out to me that not all plants will produce fruit the first time after being planted. Some of them, like onions and potatoes will push up a seed the first year, which you then plant and that seed will bear fruit. Other plants like avocados and tomatoes (because they are the seed, and have seeds) will bear fruit after being planted. And then there are the plants that you can propagate such as mint and parsley, and will continue to grow and grow as long as they are cared for. Spring onions seems to me like a really good thing to have planted because as long as you plant the white roots, the plant will continue to grow the leafy green bit which you can then cut off and eat, again and again.

This is an important thing to remember because I did not know this, and whoever reads my website needs to learn this so that they don't try to grow every vegetable that they have because they will be disappointed and discouraged.

List of things that will grow from cuttings and are edible

- garlic

- avocados

- herbs, propagate

- tomatoes

- spring onions
- chives
- lettuce, depends on the type, leafy ones that you can pick leaves off the side are good

(I gathered this information from talking to my father who is a horticulturalist and viticulturist, and currently works for a company that specialises in replenishing soil in a natural and organic way with the nutrients it needs for plants to grow efficiently)

Website Plan

Pages

1. Home page 

2. News and events page

3. Contact + social media links

4. How to grow _____ + recipes and preservation tips (1)

5. How to grow _____ + recipes and preservation tips (2)

6. The issue with climate change and vegetable scraps, small action = big difference

Social media plan

Andre said to show the end product not the hard work it takes to get there, so I thought it would be a good idea to share a recipe to make with the home grown produce.

Now, there is a potential ethical issue with sharing a recipe that is not my own, but perhaps this could be remedied by changing the recipe slightly, or asking the owner of the recipe for their permission and then including credit to the author.

Also all of the recipes that I include in my website will be vegan because I myself cannot promote otherwise even for a uni assignment because of my beliefs, but also because it goes hand in hand with the whole point of the website. If the point is to use vegetable scraps to save waste then how could I promote a diet that is a huge contributor to environmental pollution, such as the dairy and meat industries.

Some recipes that could be good to share or have in the website:

- basil pesto using garlic and pasta

- margarita pizza, with basil on top and tomatoes

- spring onion soup

- lettuce tacos, using a lettuce leaf instead of a regular taco shell

- burgers with homemade quinoa and kumara patties, using grown lettuce and tomatoes

- roasted vegetables using grown rosemary 

This image which I shared in my previous post is an idea for the social media aspect. I could do a similar thing and use hand drawn illustrations to share a recipe for which to use homegrown produce. This is more than just a recipe, it is also a piece of artwork.

Here is the wireframe for the social media post idea. This is on instagram, and it would have been inserted in someone's homepage while they scrolled down on posts from people that they follow. Another idea I had for this was a video of someone making the basil pesto because that sort of thing always interests me. It also helps to show how easy it is to make if there is a short clip of someone making this from scratch and then eating it in 15 seconds.

Class Notes