Version Control: One Founder’s Mission to Save Local Farms with Figma Make | Figma Blog
Aaron Veale used Figma Make to build Planet Food, a marketplace connecting British Columbia farmers with Vancouver restaurants, in under three weeks. Motivated by the financial crisis facing local farms, he used rapid AI-assisted prototyping to validate the idea directly with farmers and chefs. The project shows how prompt-to-app tools can help founders move quickly while tailoring products to real user workflows. ## The problem facing local farms - British Columbia farmers lost a record CAD $457 million last year, with the sector operating at a net loss since 2017. - Rising costs, disrupted supply chains, regulatory changes, and factory-farm competition are pushing small growers out of business. - Farmers are skilled at producing food but often lack time and resources for marketing and sales. - Large distributors can pressure farmers into selling produce at a loss. - Veale envisioned a marketplace linking farms directly with restaurants seeking high-quality local ingredients. ## Building the first marketplace prototype - Veale spent six weeks interviewing farmers before developing the product. - Planet Food required two connected systems: - **Farm OS:** Farmers record and categorize available produce. - **Restaurant OS:** Chefs search for and order ingredients. - He built both systems in parallel using separate Figma Make projects. - Roughly 20 prompts produced the first prototype in a single day. - Early versions became conversation starters that Veale could show farmers and restaurants for immediate feedback. ## Designing for farmers’ daily reality - The app uses dark mode to reduce glare for farmers working outdoors. - Because farmers may work 12–16-hour days, tasks were designed to take fewer than three clicks. - Veale prioritized simple workflows over feature-heavy interfaces. - He used screenshots of familiar interactions, such as swipes and slide-ups, as prompt references. - Figma Make allowed him to refine the product’s mobile-first interface without relying on a large engineering team. ## Humanizing the product through personas - Veale used his design and filmmaking background to treat prompting as a form of storytelling. - He created detailed personas describing users’ traits, motivations, responsibilities, and pain points. - The farmer persona emphasized: - Small or midsize British Columbia operations - Limited administrative capacity - Seasonal workloads and slim teams - The need for fair prices and predictable income - Common frustrations included manually updating spreadsheets, guessing restaurant demand, and overselling or underselling due to poor synchronization. - Veale used ChatGPT to turn these personas and the onboarding flow into more detailed Figma Make prompts. - Custom icons and branded interactions helped make the interface more approachable and engaging. ## Speed as a startup advantage - Figma Make enabled Veale to move from an idea to a functioning MVP in weeks rather than following the traditional fundraising-and-development sequence. - Demonstrating an actively used product gave him stronger evidence of market demand and a potential signal for investors. - The process also let him remain closely involved in product design instead of compromising his vision through multiple layers of implementation. Planet Food illustrates how AI-assisted development can accelerate product validation while keeping design grounded in user research. For founders addressing urgent problems, rapid prototyping combined with direct customer feedback can be more valuable than waiting to assemble a conventional product team.
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