Digitization of Agriculture in India

What is the digitization of agriculture?

It is the small-holder agronomic platform enabling collaboration, data collection, and decision-making, seeking to improve the livelihoods of all who participate.

We aim to help the Indian farming community through our mobile farm care app by reducing costs, incredibly efficient in the process.

* To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of the company.

Challenges

How we can provide accurate information regarding markets? How to win their trust?
Who do farmers turn to for credible and in-depth information?
How to provide accurate, timely, and customized information to my customers at the right time?
Who can collect and correlate all data and feedback from the farmers to improvise on the offerings?
How to give farmers right info about the daily mandi prices and how can we win the trust and engage them in the app?
How to create awareness of better crop protection products that can be used to solve the problem?

My Role

The team consisted of two members, supported by an external agency for research under my surveillance. In this project, I was involved in every phase of the product lifecycle, from brainstorming and defining requirements with stakeholders, to developing new features, designing, and testing interfaces. I collaborated with developers and conducted usability testing to understand both business and user needs. My focus leaned more towards research and development, while the other designer focused on visuals.

Throughout the process, I mentored the other designer, particularly on visual and creating design guidelines for Design System which will be going to be used by other stakeholders

User Adoption

Onboarding
Customization
Key features
Self -serve features
In app flows to show new or used features

User feedback on friction points
A/b testing
Re-engage with inactive users

Research

To understand their behavior, need
How to shape the business use case with the user needs

APPROACH

PROCESS

Lean UX Method

Understanding the Product & Domain

I went ahead with the agile approach process which emphasizes rapid sketching, prototyping, feedback from stakeholders and design mockups. This helped in meeting the deadlines and keeping a constant flow of design screens and feedbacks.

Search domains are very complex. Giving the right information to the user is a huge task. It was very important to take few knowledge transfer sessions with the stakeholders to understand the product and the pain points. Also, to design an optimal solution(without harming the existing customers was another challenge) doing a persona study, competitive analysis of the market into the same business was a necessity and users ask.

Why us

We understand that farming in India is not a job but a way of life.

Our mobile app is set to become a game changer for Indian farmers, catering to their every need related to agriculture.

A salient feature of our product is standing on 3 pillars of content creation :

Timeliness

Credibility

Accuracy

Initial research

We spent around a month touring and interviewing farmers in various villages in Karnataka and Maharashtra. In Karnataka, we visited villages around Doddaballapur, Hampi, Belgaum, Hubli, and Davangere while in Maharashtra villages around Pune, Nashik, and Baramati were covered.

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Focus Group Interviews

We conducted focus group user interviews with existing and potential users of the application and asked them about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes toward general farming practices. This helped us gain an understanding of the various aspects of farming and the farmer’s psyche.

Naturalistic Observational research

Using the observational research method, we captured farmer’s behavior in their natural environment. It helped us directly look at what farmers are actually doing, what kind of routines they could have with the application, and how the application can be used in different contexts of their lives.

Questionnaire

Findings - demogrpahics

Defining the target Audience

Competitor Analysis

Insights &Takeaways - User Persona

This exercise helped us understand the goals, motivations and expectations of the farmers which will, in turn, help us work towards solving their frustrations.

Large scale landowners

Shiv kumar

Ramakant

Small scale landowners

Haripal

Small scale landowners

Prioritization of Features

On the basis of emotional context map and business requirements

Often prioritizes breadth of features to appeal to a wider audience.

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KEY FEATURES

Onboarding

FarmRise is an app conceptualized to help the Indian farmer community optimize their resources and maximize their yields and profits by utilizing the information and attributes provided on the app.

The onboarding process is kept very informational and simple to help the target audience (farmers) understand how to use the app without much hassle.

Guide to designing a seamless onboarding process for farmers:

Understand the Farmers' Context
Simplified Sign-Up Process
Localized UI/UX
Visual and Audio Guides
Demonstrate Value Quickly –(incentive of registration)
Offline Access

Market Prices

Prices are sourced daily from 167 markets (Mandi) across the country for over 60 crops. Prices are being sourced via on-field staff deployed by an external agency.
Farmers can view any Mandi in their state or all over the country for all the crops that they have selected
Farmers can check max and min price trends for the last 10 days
It's the most used feature on the app with around 40% of daily active users using it.

In app Flows

Guided flows, to give users a quick and immediate introduction to a new feature. This saves users the trouble of having to look for a feature, find a help center article, or contact someone from your team.

Feedback

- user feedback on friction points and what they plan to accomplish with your tool

Collecting customer feedback from users is the most accurate way your team can identify growth and adoption tactics for your product.

We can use digital adoption platforms, chatbots, or survey tools to consistently gather insight from users regarding their experience with your product and what we can do to improve it. With these tools, we can also target your feedback collection at points in the product journey where you’ve noticed lower levels of engagement.