Overview

Falling Fruit is a nonprofit platform that supports urban foragers by mapping harvestable trees worldwide through crowd-sourced data on an interactive map. For this project, our team partnered with the development group to address a challenge: how to design new features that allow private tree owners to share access to their trees with the public.

Our Challenge:

→ Develop a system that allows private tree owners to indicate whether and when they welcome public harvesting in a clear, accessible, and easy-to-implement way.

HMW Statement:

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How might we create a system for organizing private property foraging that feels secure and reliable to both foragers and tree owners?

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Research and Insights

To start our project, we conducted online research on Falling Fruits and other platforms. Our design coach introduced us to a research method from her field called “related worlds,” which involves studying successful stories from similar projects to inform our own design process. We explored several platforms, including Airbnb, Rover, YardYum, and Mundraub, to understand how they addressed similar trust-building challenges. These insights helped us identify core user needs for a trust-based system, which we then used to guide the development of our survey questions and gather more specific insights from the Falling Fruit user base.

https://embed.figma.com/board/zG3VGEc1QpE0yeIm1TdD8s/FF-Research---Ideation?node-id=265-1686&t=VOkxpFPFCn5lDILK-4&embed-host=notion&footer=false&theme=system

We collaborated with two other teams to create a survey that the developers sent out to the email list of their users. The survey was highly successful, reaching over 200 responses within a week or two, and provided us with valuable insights on how to approach a system for foraging on private property.

Cleaned Survey Results from our section

Full Survey results

From our survey responses, 157/235 (66.8%) foragers claimed that even if a tree was marked as okay to pick on private property, they’d still feel uncomfortable foraging, while tree owners expressed concern about having unfamiliar individuals picking from their trees. While conducting our online research, we came across Airbnb’s Pyramid of Trust, which helped guide us in identifying key features to include that would help build trust between private tree owners and foragers.

1. Permission to privately owned property: Trust and verification are crucial for Falling Fruits users to feel comfortable foraging on private property. Users require up-to-date confirmation from the current property owner that foraging is permitted to prevent anxiety and fear of confrontation from foragers. User survey quote: “I would need to know that the property owner marked it as okay to pick, and I would want a personal message from them giving details to ensure that it's not an old message and I'm not going to get in trouble.”
2. User Accountability and Owner Security: We wanted private owners to feel comfortable using the app and let them know that their fruits are being properly foraged, that foragers are following rules, and that users are being held accountable for breaking rules or guidelines.

Design and Prototyping

In the early phases, we explored systems to address trust, access, and transparency in urban foraging.

We created user flows to compare the frustrations of foragers vs. homeowners, mapping their differing needs and concerns around property boundaries, permission, and plant accessibility.

Main Features:

• User Profiles/Verification—to confirm if a post is from the actual property owner.
• Private vs. Public Land Indicators—to clearly distinguish foraging boundaries.
• Update/Renew Information—to ensure the permission status is current and accurate.

Deliverable

Our prototype focuses on improving trust and safety when foraging near/on private property by distinguishing between public and private trees. A key feature in our prototype is a separate tab for editing private trees, meant for private property owners. This new tab also includes an expanded editing sidebar so tree owners can provide more detailed information about how and when to harvest. On the public map, private trees are visually distinguished by using a different color and tags to differentiate them from public ones. To help build trust, access to private trees is limited only to verified users, and we added a chat feature to help foster relationships between foragers and tree owners. Additionally, we implemented a forager request feature so that private property owners are able to provide proper consent to foragers.

Figma File:https://www.figma.com/design/apd5rSKMWDczF3IZdkd6Y5/FF-Hi-Fi?node-id=0-1&t=LHyqg1gCJXARWFEO-1

Verify your ID to unlock private property foraging—add your own trees, request access to others’, and help keep our community safe and accountable.