Reflection Report: Interface Design of The Farm Shop Application

This report provides a detailed reflection on the interface design of "The Farm" mobile application, created for Australian users to access online services such as food items, wines, gifts, catering, and restaurant bookings. Developed using Balsamic, the app aims to expand the business's functionalities and provide convenient services to local customers. The report discusses the application's design, focusing on user requirements like registration, special offers, product categories, search functionality, and booking options. It also explores factors influencing the design, such as the need for cross-platform compatibility and security considerations. The report draws a comparison with a similar application, "Eat 24," highlighting similarities in GUI and features while also noting areas for improvement, such as advanced presentation, payment gateways, and a wish list option. Overall, the reflection emphasizes the importance of user-centric design and the continuous improvement of mobile applications to meet evolving customer needs. Desklib offers a wealth of resources for students, including solved assignments and past papers.

Table of Contents
Abstract............................................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Interface Design Reflection.............................................................................................................2
The Farm Shop Interface Design:................................................................................................2
Requirement of the user:..............................................................................................................3
Factors influence the Farm Shop Design:....................................................................................3
More interfaces Similar to Farm Shop:.......................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5

Abstract
In this reflection report, the discussion is made on the application of The Farm which was
designed for the people of the Australia for giving various online services of the food items,
wines, gifts, catering, and booking of the restaurant to their customers. The reason behind
creating this mobile application is to expand the functionalities of the business in the market and
offer various services of The Farm to the local customers. The tool used to develop this mobile
application is Balsamic. With the help of this application, the client can scroll various categories
and services offered by this Farm Shop and can be able to use those services just by clicking on
the application. In this application a customer can select any food product, multiple wines,
various gift items and so many more. In addition to this, customer can also book the restaurant
for small function like anniversary or the birthday party for maximum 50 people and also offers
the services of catering. For future purpose, the application can be used for providing more
options and products on the application and also can make the design more attractive GUI of the
application.
Introduction
In this assignment, in the very first part the discussion will be made on the design of interface for
the Farm shop. In the next part, the discussion will be made on the requirement of the users with
the experience. Again in the next part, the discussion will be made on the design influence
mechanism. And in the last section, the discussion will be made on the similar interface design
for some other application.
Interface Design Reflection
The Farm Shop Interface Design:
The design of this application of The Farm is useful for the local people of the city for using
features and services offered by the farm shop from their mobile phones at the best level
(Snaches, Hook, and Vaara, 2010). The purpose behind making the design of this application is
to serve the best quality features to the customers. The reason behind choosing this design of the
application to provide easy user interface and making the communication smooth and easy
between the user and the application. The design of The Farm application is the best solution
because it meets all the user requirements and provide very easy interface. The heuristics that
meets the application the most is flexibility and it is very easy to use. Also the application helps
in preventing error by displaying pop up message of error and this fulfills the heuristics of the
prevention of error. Also, the documentation part of the screen is good and it is helpful for user
to interact in the application easily. This fulfills the requirements of the heuristics of
documentation and help. This solution is the best implemented design for the user as all the
requirement re fulfilled and almost all the heuristics principle is followed and kept in mind while
designing the application (Charland and Leroux, 2011).

Requirement of the user:
As per the user requirement, the application must follow and fulfill the need of the users. The
requirement of the new user is to register on the application and that can be done by providing
the details like address, contact and name and many more of the new user on the sign up page.
Also user required the offer page on which the special loyalty discount and related special offers
are displayed. The user requirement is of the various categories of product which is displayed on
the categories page. Also, one more requirements is of searching any item in the application and
it can be done by checking on the home page. The requirement is also of displaying individual
product and the each item page is displayed individually of red wine, white wine, gifts page and
so many more. The requirement is also for the cart and ordering the product which can be
achieved on the cart page and order screen page (Nayebi and Abran, 2012 ). There is also
requirement of the logout and login functionality in the application that is being fulfilled by
providing the pages of logout and login. The requirement is also of booking the restaurant for
any small function and that is achieved by the help of booking page.
Factors influence the Farm Shop Design:
The factors that influence the design of The Farm applications are enormous. The influenced
factors for the design firstly based on the requirement of the user. The user requirement is to
access the application from any type of phone but the application is not useful for the IOS user as
it is designed for only android phones. This challenges the design principle of flexibility for
various different mobile phone users. Various other organization requirement is to develop
application for all type of mobiles phones whether it is android, or IOS or windows. Many
competitors in the market develop the application for every type of operating system for making
it flexible to use for different mobile phone users. Another requirement of the user is that the
application must remember the username and password of user when they open the application.
As in this design every time user open the application, they have to enter such details. This
challenge the design principle of recognition instead of recalling (Bertini and Kimani, 2006). The
restriction behind this need is that if the phone is operated by some faulty person then he can use
the user’s phone for some scam or illegal activity. The owner of the shop requires some security
to avoid such scam or activities. Other competitor provide some more advanced technology like
application locker, face detection for increasing the security.
More interfaces Similar to Farm Shop:
The application from which the idea is taken to develop The Farm application is “Eat 24”. The
application is much similar with the design of the application of The Farm (Heitkötter,
Hanschke, and Majchrzak, 2012). The GUI and representation in both the design is 60% similar.
The features like some navigation pages from login to home, then order food and adding the item
in the cart is similar to the application of Eat 24. The application location and contact page is
also very similar to the application. Also, the navigation is also similar in some format. In my
design, I have added less features on single page to maintain its consistency. Also, in my
application I have provided more products like gifts and drinks besides food items. The one
feature that is weak from the design of the Eat 24 application is that they has very good

presentation and payment gateway options. Also, the application is using wish list option that is
missing form our application (Eat24, 2018).
Link of the similar application: https://www.eat24.com/
Conclusion
In the reflection assignment, the discussion is made on the application of “The Farm”. In this
assignment the discussion is made on the user design interface, the requirement of the users, the
factors that are influencing the application and also the similar application from which the idea is
taken.

References
 Sanches, P., Höök, K., Vaara, E., Weymann, C., Bylund, M., Ferreira, P., ... & Sjölinder,
M. (2010, August). Mind the body!: designing a mobile stress management application
encouraging personal reflection. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM conference on designing
interactive systems (pp. 47-56). ACM.
 Charland, A., & Leroux, B. (2011). Mobile application development: web vs.
native. Communications of the ACM, 54(5), 49-53.
 Nayebi, F., Desharnais, J. M., & Abran, A. (2012, April).
The state of the art of mobile application usability
evaluation. In Electrical & Computer Engineering
(CCECE), 2012 25th IEEE Canadian Conference on (pp. 1-
4). IEEE.
 Bertini, E., Gabrielli, S., & Kimani, S. (2006, May).
Appropriating and assessing heuristics for mobile
computing. In Proceedings of the working conference on
Advanced visual interfaces (pp. 119-126). ACM.
 Heitkötter, H., Hanschke, S., & Majchrzak, T. A. (2012,
April). Evaluating cross-platform development approaches
for mobile applications. In International Conference on
Web Information Systems and Technologies (pp. 120-138).
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
 Eat24 Food Delivery | Order Online | Restaurants Delivery.
(2018). Eat24.com. Retrieved from https://www.eat24.com/