From User Research to UX Strategy: Transforming a Product into the Frontrunner of the Precision Farming Market
Defining a strategic approach in how to deliver UX transformation for a client, based on user research and developing specific use cases.
Background
For a client in the agriculture industry, I embarked on a transformation of their precision crop production service provider which produces and interprets variable rate maps. The product allows growers and advisors to view and analyse precision farming data, making it easy to add, retrieve and alter information and allows accurate and effective modelling to test scenarios without the need to step outside.
The global precision farming market is estimated at USD 10.63 billion in 2023 and is projected to be around USD 26.8 billion by 2030, due to key drivers such as the growing demand for food and sustainability. Due to their high market shares, our client’s product is in a unique position to become a leader in the UK’s precision farming market. However, to become a frontrunner, our client must need to adapt their business models and understanding of their market to the new reality.
Our objective was therefore to demonstrate how our client’s product could be modernised through a Phase 1 MVP.
We intended to:
Create a platform that is built on the foundations of the user research and the specific use cases for the personas identified.
Harness UX best practice principles to reduce cognitive load and make workflows as intuitive and as efficient as possible.
Bring the client along the journey with timely review checkpoints of the workflows and design concepts.
Build in end user test review cycles into the design process to help us identify potential problems and validate our design approach before development effort.
Scope of work
Assess the current usability of the product and how it compares to their competitors’
Conduct user research with internal and external users and develop personas / user journeys to pinpoint their goals and pain points, as well as how they use the product
Distil main findings from all the research to complete and better articulate use cases
Evaluate use cases and formulate a point of view of the priority ones for the MVP
Formulate a UX delivery plan: what’s included in each UX ‘work packet’?
Develop a product roadmap of how we intend to rollout the design for remaining use cases after the MVP is delivered
Have workshop sessions to validate:
Point of view/approach with the client/stakeholders
Workflows and user journeys
Design concepts and interactions
Heuristic Evaluation
We conducted a heuristic evaluation in order to develop an understanding of the product’s usability before we interviewed users. Our aim was to pinpoint the product’s pros and cons in terms of usability, in order to ask relevant questions to users during interviews and also accurately envision what they may mention in response to our questions.
We also conducted a UX competitive evaluation by conducting a heuristic evaluations on competitor products. Our aim was to identify common usability issues across competitors and also gain insight into what works well/does not work well with their UX design. After conducting the evaluation, we plotted every product’s score along each heuristic in a spider diagram. This method proved efficient in visually detecting differences in each heuristic across products.
The scores of each heuristic for the product and competitor products were also placed in one table to aid in identifying common usability issues. This table aided in understanding where the product needed improvement to match other products in the market, or did better than other products.
User Research
We conducted user research with both internal and external users to understand the role the product has in their roles/day-to-day. We conducted interviews to understand their goals and expectations of using the product, as well as their pain points. We interviewed various users groups such as farmers, area managers, and agronomists. We followed a rough interview guide with questions, however, each interview differed significantly as the different user groups had different use cases for the product. Each interview lasted around an hour long.
Based on what was uncovered during our interviews, developed personas and user journeys for each user group. A total of 6 personas was created, with varying expectations and goals.
User Persona 1: Brad Barns
Brad is a modern farmer, meaning he is very eager to introduce new forms of technology into running his farm if it improves efficiency and yield. Brad’s main goal is to spend less time in the office and more time in the fields, therefore, he uses the product. He finds the product very unintuitive to use and forgets the different functionalities as he is a seasonal user ( he does not use the product during harvest as he is too busy working in the field). His main frustration is that he is unable to make significant changes to his fields such as changing boundaries on his own and at his own time, as he currently has to call his area manager to get this done.
User Requirements
Based on the user research we conducted, we identified user requirements to specify what the product should do based on user needs and expectations. We categorised our requirements into functional and experiential requirements. We gave each requirement a complexity score, in terms of how difficult it would be to implement it.
The first key functional requirement that we identified were to improve visibility of soil sampling and queries by introducing a new logistics tool, as users often felt in the dark about statuses and were unable to track the progress of key services. The second key functional requirement was to empower users to manipulate their own data, such as change their own field boundaries, to minimise their dependancy on others to make changes.
The most critical experiential requirements was to make the product more streamline and less clunky in terms of flow and design, to improve usability and facilitate its usage for diverse user groups. The product’s UI must be modernised to attract more users and offer value to them.
The User Journey Map detailed Mihail’s experience of coming home from work on a Friday evening, wanting to go out but not knowing what events are happening. This results in an online search for events which is frustrating until he finds an event website to help him, but then gets redirected to a different website to buy a ticket.
Use Cases
Based on the user research we conducted, we identified a number of uses cases. We prioritised five use cases based on how foundational they are to the product. We recommended that these use cases should be tackled first in our UX delivery plan as they deal with functions that are essential to the success of the product.
Priority Use Cases UX Work Packets:
Viewing farms and fields
Crop inputting
Observing fields through map layers
Soil sampling booking tool
Generating plans/recommendations
Example Use Case: Viewing farms and fields
This use case is fundamental as it involves the management of field data, which is the core of the product. Farmers require empowerment to manage their own field data through the increased opportunities of self service capabilities, including editing field boundaries within their own farms. Self service capabilities will also consequently reduce the workload of IT superusers drastically.
Considerations
Farmer autonomy to amend field properties, such as field name editing and boundaries.
Self service of a wider range of services such as generating recommendations and scouting.
Based on the user research we conducted, our clients listed the top 10 issues they wanted to target in the UX strategy roadmap. We listed the issues that we targeted under each use case to help us prioritise and group use cases in the next stage of our process: developing work packets.
How we take Use Cases and organise them into UX “Work Packets”
After defining the priority use cases, we organised them into separate or grouped packets of work based on their associations and complexity, that can be pursued in agile sprints. We have organised the work packets by the priority, forming the product roadmap for the product.
To determine our tasks and their duration for each work packet, we listed all the user actions and their goals for each use case. Based on this, we determined the different functionalities required to be design on screens for these goals to be achieved. This allowed us to estimated the number of screens we need to design and consequently how long it will take to design them for each work packet.
Example Work Packet: Viewing farms and fields
This use case will represent its own work packet due to the redesign of the Information Architecture (IA) that it requires. A redesign of the flow of selecting farms and fields is necessary, as well as an extension to enable the editing of field boundaries. This will be the most intuitive manner to facilitate field boundary amendments, as this is how users can select specific fields from their farms.
Estimated Sprint Duration: 2 weeks
Involves restructuring of the IA (i.e., reorganising the content on the website in a more intuitive manner) which will take roughly a week to complete
Restructuring of the IA will also improve the workflows of the other use cases
Once the IA is designed and approved, the screens will be designed for selecting/viewing farms and fields and editing boundaries
Using the mid-fidelity wireframes in conjunction with the feedback received, we created a prototype for usability testing.
Conclusion
Our user research informed the vision, goals and plan for the roadmap to reflect the real needs and concerns of the users. Furthermore, by engaging with the client regularly in each step of the process through check-ins and workshops, we ensured that our roadmap also considered their needs and constraints to make the strategy plausible and drive priority.