Falling Fruit maps forgeable food hiding in plain sight across cities worldwide — 1.5 million plant pins, 258,000 users, and the most comprehensive urban foraging tool available. Yet it leaves beginners completely stranded: no guidance, no safety context, no confidence.
TEAM
Elsa Sinuhaji Ana Lizagarra Kaia Crozier Alex Illeto Neal Sison
MY ROLE
User research UX design Strategy
DURATION
6 Weeks 2024
TOOLS
Figma Adobe Creative Suite
I reimagined Falling Fruit to help newcomers navigate those uncertainties and forage with real confidence — work that earned a positive review from Falling Fruit's co-founder, Ethan Welty. I led user research end-to-end — interviews, literature review, and synthesis — and originated the map layer and plant profile interventions.
THE problem
As a volunteer-run, open-source non-profit, Falling Fruit operates with minimal resources and no dedicated product team. Despite 258,000 users and 1.5 million plant pins, it remains a bare-bones map: no onboarding, no safety guidance, no features for the people most likely to need them. Already lacking confidence with urban foraging, beginners are exposed with horror stories about foragers getting arrested in the wrong areas, or getting sick since they didn't realize their goods grew on toxic soil. The platform may exist to make urban foraging accessible, but for beginners there are still many open loops.
The Opportunity
Novice foragers are motivated by fresh food, connection to nature, and self-sufficiency — but held back by fear of contamination, legal uncertainty, and not knowing where it's safe to forage; nearly half of novice foragers cite lack of knowledge as a barrier, and over a third worry about environmental contamination in what they harvest (Synk et al., 2017; Fischer & Kowarik, 2020).
Research pointed to three main barriers:
1. Pollution risks
Urban land carries a history. Contaminants like heavy metals and pollutants can concentrate in plants depending on where and what you harvest.
2. Legal confusion
Strict regulations around public and private green spaces make it genuinely difficult for people to know where foraging is permitted.
3. Safety knowledge
Distinguishing edible from toxic species is a real and common barrier for beginners.
I decided not to pursue Insight 3 in our intervention for two reasons: the market is already saturated with identification tools like iNaturalist and Seek, and misidentification risks in such apps are well-documented (The Guardian, 2024). We wanted to carve out a more focused, lower-risk niche, where Falling Fruit is best positioned to make an impact.
The guiding question
How might we support novice urban foragers, by helping them identify pollution and foraging-allowed areas, in order to enable confident and responsible foraging?
OUR APPROACH
Rather than building something completely new, I chose to work within what Falling Fruit already had: a trusted map platform with municipal data partnerships across 50+ cities. Every decision had to be cost-effective. We leaned into Falling Fruit's core value of transparency, targeting the mobile app where 70% of users already are. The goal: make the invisible visible, so a beginner could open the app and immediately know whether a location was safe and legal to forage.
research process
I conducted 2 semi-structured interviews with urban foragers and led an extensive review of academic literature. My most telling find: the participants didn't identify as beginner foragers at all — they'd pick berries near a transit stop without ever naming it foraging. Beyond that, themes were consistent, solidifying my direction for Falling Fruit's redesign: road proximity matters, signage hinting at illegality deters immediately, and community builds real confidence.
"I recognize sometimes it's dangerous to eat foraged foods, so I won't eat it without checking with more experienced friends, or an app."
— User Participant
concept evolution
My early concept was a maps-only redesign, additional layers for pollution, restrictions, and edibility. But the more research I sat with it, the more I realized this only solution answered what, not how or what next. A beginner doesn't just need data points; they need support across the full experience: before they leave home, while they're standing in front of a plant, and once they're back. A layers-only solution also wouldn't give Falling Fruit a meaningful edge — map overlays are easy to replicate.
My biggest tension was aesthetic; Falling Fruit's existing interface had confusing flows and little visual coherence, and I was itching to change it. However I chose to work within the existing interface rather than redesign it, since I knew a full overhaul would never ship on a volunteer team's limited capacity. Narrowing the solution space was exactly what the project needed — the constraint of building only from free, open-source data ended ended up sharpening the work, forcing us to find the highest-value changes, not just the most obvious ones.
design solution
Our redesign reframes Falling Fruit around the full foraging journey — before, during, and after. From my interviews, I realized our initial user identity was not accurate: we thought we were designing for beginner foragers, but we were actually designing for people who already forage without realizing it. This meant that support we provide had to feel natural in the moment, and strengthen the trust in their foraging abilities.
Intervention 1
We prioritized map layers first because they required no new user behaviour — foragers were already using the map
F1 Body text: To prototype at real scale, we focused on Baltimore — an active foraging city with robust free municipal data. Four new layers — traffic, air quality, water quality, and restricted foraging areas — help novice foragers navigate safely and legally. Data sourced from IQAir and OpenStreetMap: free, credible, zero added cost.
Intervention 2
Wikipedia links were the biggest trust gap we found in testing, so we replaced them with location-specific, actionable data.
Previously, Falling Fruit linked only to Wikipedia for plant details, limiting the practical, real-world insights novice foragers actually need. The redesigned plant profiles integrate location-specific data — covering images, peak seasons, forager activity, linked recipes, and user contributions — while also allowing foragers to document their own experiences, fostering a more engaged and knowledgeable community. Pollution indicators are woven in as well, flagging nearby air, water, and traffic risks so foragers can immediately assess whether a spot is safe to harvest from. The result is a single, reliable source of information for first-time foragers, without needing to look anywhere else.
Intervention 3
Audio was a deliberate choice — screens-down keeps foragers present and safe in the field.
Legally designated foraging routes give novice foragers a safe, confidence-building entry point. Many municipalities already share plant data with Falling Fruit, making these a natural extension. Hands-free audio keeps foragers present. Route data sourced from free city resources; audio content draws on open-source guides by Falling Fruit's own researchers.
Intervention 4
Without a 'what's next' answer, we risked users harvesting food they'd never use. 'Makes' and recipes closed the loop.
This feature gives users a practical next step, surfacing recipes and practical uses for each foraged good — sourced from Maryland's Department of Natural Resources. Free, public, open-source.
Reflection
Designing within real-world constraints doesn't limit a solution, it grounds it in what actually works.
When we presented to Ethan Welty, co-founder of Falling Fruit, he said: "It's nice to see you take on safety of novice foragers. This is a real concern, which is something we realize we probably should have done." A founder acknowledging his own product's gap is a stronger signal than any grade or compliment — it meant the problem was real, the scope was right, and the solution was worth building.
This project was my first time fully leading research and experience design, and the constraint turned out to be the point. My biggest near-miss was designing for the wrong user — someone who identified as a forager and wanted better data — but my interviews corrected that.
Working within a scrappy, volunteer-run platform with no budget forced me to find the highest-value changes rather than the most obvious ones, and that's the skill I want to keep sharpening. If I could redo this project, I would spend more time testing whether the redesign changed actual foraging behaviour, not just perceived confidence.
