A unified feedback platform that connects gardeners and managers through transparent issue tracking, fostering accountability and trust in community garden spaces.
The project aimed to create a website used by community managers of gardens and resident gardeners of a specific district of Singapore, Tengah. Residents could apply for, manage their garden plot and view their application status, while managers could allocate garden plots and bookings accordingly.
Supported by Tengah Community Innovation Taskforce (CIT) and Tengah Community Centre (CC).
Processing of physical paperwork regarding garden plot application was tedious, inconsistent, and slow. Community managers would need to sort through paperwork, applicants would wait in the dark, not knowing how long their application would take to approve or whether it was forgotten since it could take months.
Our goal was to design a transparent, accessible, reliable platform for both managers and residents to manage garden plots.
We wanted a style that was clean, professional and minimalistic similar to those found within government websites. I looked into FormSG, RedeemSG, Armoury in particular to home in on that particular style.
Simple, consistent colours to match the overall aesthetic of the website for a cohesive experience.
Readable graphics that users can understand within a glance.
Graphics should invoke an intended emotion for users to understand the message more strongly.
Graphic From RedeemSG invoking ease of use, happiness and spreading joy.
We initially needed graphics for 3 sections which I titled 'Managing Gardens', 'View Ballot Status', and 'Neighbour Gardening'. The 1st section was the most important since it was our hero image. It had to convey our purpose and personality succintly.
Initial exploration for that took me to drafting a garden scene with fences, grass on ground, and additional other details. Further iterations removed many elements and added new ones such as children, phone in hand (representing the website), and the ballot box icon.
The second section would feature a snippet of one of our website's functions, 'View Ballot Status', so it had to be the main focus. To balance out the composition, a person on his phone along with an icon was added.
The third section was our call to action where the centrepiece would have to be our website. I represented this as a phone with our logo (a bird) on it. People from different walks of life would be drawn to it, beckoning others to come over. A balancing element was the bird that flew an arc through the people, creating a "connection" both visually and thematically.
Early explorations shaped the design.
All illustrations include at least 1 person. This is to establish the human connection that people naturally seek. Users will feel more in touch the more 'human' the connection is - expressive facial expression, variety of characters for relatability.
I kept designs as simple as possible because translating them into the final assets (.svg) would be much simpler. Additionally, having complex shading or rendering would violate our intended style.
13 fully polished, minified SVGs ranging from large web assets, to icons, to sample user portraits.
Internally, the developers and the manager were pleased with the results. They had provided guidance and feedback along the way, ensuring the vision was maintained. I had learned and experience many things I had not done before. I had background in digital art, but not in web graphics development, so I had to learn how to do that in Figma. I also found the process of ensuring my sketches fit that particular style challenging since its one I'm not used to.