uHarvest

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  Business Canvas

Inspiration

The inspiration for uHarvest was the desire for access to the bounty of produce we could see in peoples gardens, and our dismay at seeing edibles and fruit cast neglected across the ground. Understanding that consuming large quantities of food in a short harvest is unreasonable, and distributing at local markets is beyond the capability of most home gardeners, we wanted to come up with a simple and elegant solution.

In alignment with our values and experiences, we saw potential for improving the physical, mental, and community health of entire cities. A solution that broke down the barriers between neighbours, bringing people of all walks of life together to share in the universal joys of both growing and consuming quality produce. On a larger scale, an application that encouraged and empowered people to choose locally sourced food in favour of high-mile and high-waste alternatives.

What it does

uHarvest is a digital marketplace platform that directly connects small scale producers with local consumers. In order to achieve our local intention, the system is based around geo-location that informs users of the nearest food available for barter or purchase at the discretion of the producer and consumer. Supplemented with search and browse functionality, the application creates a real time and city wide "community market", where consumers are able to access freshest seasonal produce straight from the front gate.

The high level concept is the _ Gumtree _of fresh produce, where users can find, negotiate, and acquire food through a face to face interaction.

The business model is a monthly subscription at a low and reasonable rate for both producers and consumers. The value of the subscription will be the quality of the produce, the platonic interactions with neighbours, and the financial savings from eating seasonally and by price by negotiation (compared to major supermarkets).

How we built it

The high fidelity prototype was built using Adobe XD. To demonstrate the proof of concept, our prototype has only displayed fruit trees as available.

XD is a prototyping application. Buttons will work when pressed, active links will glow blue to indicate working links

Challenges we ran into

In the beginning we had a clear idea for uHarvest, however we were swayed by advice that derailed that initial concept. This diversion led to confusion of what we were really trying to create (especially considering the rapid timeframes) and we lost sight of our initial vision. However, with further advice our design returned to its core values, with radical improvements to the scale, business viability, solutions and problems, and a better definition of our target market. We encountered further difficulty in producing our pitch video, wanting to present a casual yet informative narrative alongside the functionality of our app, and realising that securing a suitable location, scripting and then narrating a video can be a weary process. We took a moment to mourn the lack of accessibility to a newscaster screen.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our team discussions have had a consistently great flow, with everyone's opinion and ideas being heard, discussed and validated or approved on fair terms. While we may have found ourselves off track, we wouldn't dismiss any of the focal points we covered as being unhelpful or detrimental to the development of our submission. Our pitch video efforts are another hurdle that we feel we succeeded in, and the end result of our prototype application is a definite highlight. Our team consists of varied skillsets and thought processes and this diversity lent itself well to this endeavour.

What we learned

That mentors are only human, and that their personal preferences must be acknowledged in appreciating their advice. That creative entrepreneurship is a process, and that "nailing it" is not necessarily the first goal, but the vision that iterations continually work to improve. We learned the value of committing to a simple idea, and comprehensively addressed problem and not letting extra problems creep in.

Clear problem and a clear solution. Paper scripts for videos are not effective as it is too loud.

Take breaks, give the sleepless more breaks and drink water.

What's next for uHarvest

Development of a functional prototype for testing and user experience improvements. The incorporation of other produce (vegetables, game and livestock, smallgoods and preserves), workshops (preserving, composting, etc), biohazard control (weeds, pests, contamination), and garden maintenance.

Built With

• adobe-xd
• paper-prototypes
• significant-willpower