Frank’s Farm

User Research
Illustrator
Figma
User Experience
User Interface

This project was a collaboration with Tilly Coggan and Reyo Conlan for a university UX unit, focused on delivering ‘Creative Care’. The brief required the final design to consider physical, digital, and spatial/processual elements, encouraging a holistic approach to the user experience. We developed Frank’s Farm, a farm safety education concept, exploring how learning about safety could be engaging, intuitive, and memorable across different contexts. The project involved user research, iterative prototyping, and testing to ensure the solution effectively communicated safety practices while fostering a supportive and educational experience.

A digital illustration of a child sitting outdoors on grass, holding a tablet device, with a farm-themed educational game on the screen. The game screen shows a cow and a girl, with tips for approaching cattle. The background features rolling green hills and a bright sky.

Design Process

We followed the Double Diamond process, moving through Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver. Research and insights guided our ideation and prototyping, exploring physical, spatial/processual, and digital solutions. Iterative testing refined the final design to create an engaging, educational farm safety experience.

A diagram showing four stages labeled Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver in a sequential process.

Discover & Define

Watch this video to see how we conducted our secondary and user resarch.

Develop

For ideation, each group member created three storyboards of potential concepts, which we then refined to one strong idea per person. This gave us three main concepts to evaluate.

To select the most suitable concept, we developed a decision matrix with key criteria including:

  • Physical, spatial, and processual alignment

  • Technological accessibility

  • Cost and sustainability

  • Ease of use for target audience

  • Safety education and promotion

  • Emotional support

Each concept was scored against these criteria, allowing us to compare their strengths and weaknesses systematically.

Through this process, the Child Learning Experience concept emerged as the most satisfactory solution. It best met the criteria, particularly in terms of safety education, accessibility for children, and long-term preventative impact. The design provides farm safety education through an engaging, kid-friendly app paired with physical toys, ensuring that children can explore farm safety in a playful and proactive way.

Ideation

Hand-drawn sketches and notes illustrating the process of creating a digital safety coach for agricultural chemicals, including spraying crops, safety regulations, digital tools, and target user interaction.
A hand-drawn storyboard illustrating the development of a kids' farm safety app, featuring six scenes with children, farm scenes, and icons of safety equipment.
A six-panel comic strip illustrating a farm safety simulation project. The first panel shows a smiling teenage boy helping on a farm. The second panel depicts him learning to handle heavy machinery. The third panel shows him accessing a safety simulation website. The fourth panel displays a computer screen with safety options. The fifth panel features him using a virtual reality headset. The sixth panel shows him and an instructor celebrating his successful completion of the training.
Screenshot of a collaborative decision matrix comparing three different farm safety educational apps for children, with evaluations on criteria like physical, spatial, digital, technological accessibility, costs, schedule, farm safety education, promotion, and emotional support. The matrix includes written reflections and discussion on each app, each section color-coded in green, purple, and pink.

Lo Fidelity Prototyping

Hand-drawn storyboard for a children's educational game about farm animals and cow watching. The storyboard includes loading screens, menu pages to select topics and activities, and a cow watching game with instructions and feedback.

Sketched Wireframes

Hand-drawn sketch of a webpage layout with sections for a video page and a lesson page. The video page includes a thumbnail, with a note to watch the video. The lesson page shows three different quiz question layouts with arrows indicating navigation, buttons for quiz answers, and a mascot character with annotations explaining the design features.
A visual design for a farm-themed app called 'Franks Farm', featuring logo, app icon, color palette, wireframes, and screens with farm animals and a farmer character.

UI Kit & LOFI Prototype

Educational game guide for cow watching activity, showing steps to scan cows, assess their condition, and identify safe cows, with illustrations of cows, a fence, and instructions on how to play the game.

To evaluate our mid-fidelity prototype of Frank’s Farm, we conducted user testing at a design fair. Our goal was to assess usability, engagement, and the integration between digital and physical components. By combining qualitative and quantitative methods, we gained insights into how children and parents might interact with the product, as well as opportunities to refine the design.

User Testing

People at a table playing a tabletop farming game with toy animals, facing large windows and a brick wall inside a bright industrial-style space.

Think Aloud Protocol

  • “Oh wait, I didn’t realise I wasn’t meant to scroll there whoops”

    • Navigation clarity issue

  • “Yeah I think everything’s quite intuitive”

    • Confirmed ease of use

  • Repeated button tapping

    • Expectation for stronger feedback

  • Dancing to music / playing with toys freely

    • High engagement but weak app–toy integration

SUS Survey

⭐ 84.5 (Excellent Usability Benchmark)

Feedback Highlights

Positives

  • Intuitive navigation

  • Integrated game functions

  • Bright “Cocomelon” UI style

Improvements Needed

  • Stronger toy–app integration

  • More interactive features (animations, sound effects, speaking characters)

  • Age-appropriate language adjustments

Comic-style educational game interface about cows, showing before and after iteration screens with different materials and interactive elements, including a cow watch game, caution song, and a button to start the game.

Iteration

Screenshot from an interactive app showing how to identify safe and unsafe cows based on their behavior and signs. The left side displays instructions for playing, with illustrations of cows and tips for checking their relaxation, calmness, and presence of warning signs like limpness, pinned ears, or tail swishing. The top part notes most participants couldn't tell they needed to scroll. The right part shows multiple views of the app interface with options for navigation.

Deliver

Check out the final prototype!

Educational infographic poster titled 'Frank's Farm' teaching kids farm safety through play. Contains sections about the app, problem, concept, daily fit, toy kits, and advice for parents and educators, with graphics of children, farm animals, toy kits, and app screens.