NFB
A Set of Conversion Tools and Digital Marketplace Platform
2022
Individual Project
#Speculative Design #Future Design #UX/UI Design #Product Design
This project speculates on how street vendors in the digital age can continue to sell their goods in the virtual world by building a new token system: the digital street vendors market. The whole system consists of a set of conversion tools and a digital marketplace platform
Background
Due to various social and environmental factors, street vendors around the world face many problems in surviving in the digital age, such as the waste of unsold goods, and so I chose banana vending as a vehicle to look at the whole street vendor economy
Signal
Bananas don’t grow in every country, but they are ubiquitous nonetheless. As the world’s most popular fruit, they account for roughly 75 percent of the tropical fruit trade and more than a hundred billion are eaten annually. They are not only a staple food for millions of people, but also an important source of income and employment, especially in Latin America
/Global banana production areas and production
Today, most sweet bananas come from a single variety called Cavendish, which means that each banana is a clone and they all have a very similar appearance and flavour
/Problems facing banana trade and production
/Key indicators of banana
/Conclusion
There are subtle differences in ripeness, sweetness, size, colour, hardness, shape and the specific location of the region where they are produced, even when grown on the same banana tree, and it is possible to define each banana by some measure of its attributes
Street Vendor
/What is a street vendor?
They are a group of people who make their living selling food and groceries on the streets, attracting customers through their cheap and affordable goods. Most of the operators are locals. They are an important part of modern city life. Whether in the subways of New York or on the streets of Moscow, vendors selling goods still exist and you can find them on the roadside, in hawker centers and other places
/Banana vendors in different countries
Almost everywhere in the world, there are groups of vendors specializing in bananas, from whom consumers can buy ripe bananas directly
Value Proposition
WHAT IF？
Digital development is impacting on today's traditional markets and urban vendors are facing a spatial shift in how they will survive in the digital economy?
As physical stalls gradually become digital vendors, how do they trade in a virtual world?
Scenario Board
Sketch
Prototyping
How It Works?
NFB Tools Manual Book
Users trade on the digital street vendor platform
The banana street vendors sell their different physical bananas on the platform after converting them into digital bananas. Users can buy as many banana tokens as they want on the digital carpet platform and users can also trade with each other
Reflection
Although street vendors are one of the most common groups in a city and they are a part of everyone's daily life, I find that little attention is paid to the problems and needs of these underclass people. With the advent of the global digital age, street vendors may be faced with disappearing and their goods going to waste, so how they survive and how they go about selling their wares will be a cause for thought
Thus, from a speculative point of view, the NFB system creates a new way of survival for these vendors in the digital age of the future, by designing a series of tools to help vendors convert their physical goods into digital goods and then post them on the virtual world platform for buyers around the world to purchase, enriching the value of the goods and increasing the economic benefits for the vendors
These tools can be used anywhere where vendors are found, such as on the street, in a marketplace or even at home
