UX Research, Analysis and Strategy check-list for Agriculture based mobile application

Currently working on an product. It’s an Android application for the farmers. Moto of our product is “How to increase the productivity with help of Technology.”

This is the first time, I’m going to create an product for non-technical users. Means, most of the farmers are less educated or maybe not educated or maybe highly educated. While working on the project, I have done couple of surveys directly with farmers.

UX Research done with farmers (on field analysis)

Since our product is for farmers mainly, then my research and analysis is mainly oriented to the usability, accessibility, efficiency, ease of operating, fluid flow, high proficiency and designing a product which will delight the user with design.

Here I’m considering the first phase of research and analysis for design process.

How much compatible they are with mobile applications?

Most of the farmers have the Android devices, they are familiar with the Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp and Google search. They have basic understanding of these applications. User spend usually more time on YouTube and Facebook videos.
I asked a farmer, what is this bell icon? On prompt, he said “to view more videos in future click this”.
Few of them know how to save video off line.
Few more points, they are familiar with the colors, Red for Warning, Green for Success.
They know how to start a discussion on WhatsApp and Facebook.
Knowledge of making response, search, reply action.

What kind of applications they use and like to use?

Farmers are using Facebook, Messenger, Youtube, Google search and WhatsApp. Few are educated and have knowledge how to ask questions on Quora and Agriculture forums, communities.

I have observed the farmers are using Youtube for learning the planting methods, new fertilizers, pesticides and same on Facebook they use to view the farming related things. They are curious to know about the chemicals and other things to increase the productivity.

In India there are featured application like Kisan Suvidha, FarmBee, Agri Science, IFFCO Kisan, Agro Star and many more. Most of the farmer are using these to get updates like Weather, Seed quality, Fertilizers, Pesticides, Planting and other things.

Farmers really want to upgrade themselves, they truly need advisory

Mobile configuration, Network coverage, Bandwidth, Storage on their mobiles?

Since, I’m reaching the farmer family and all of them belongs to village. There are limited network and Internet bandwidth. Most of the users are using JIO. They are getting the 4G, few are Idea and Airtel customer, so variance of bandwidth observed.

1. Farmers are using the low and medium range of smartphones. Have limited storage, RAM and configuration.
2. Couple of them said, they are mostly on fields and few application consume their battery faster and hang their mobile. So I’m sideways making a checklist of my research to make our product best in Industry.
3. Sometime the network breaks, so we need an application with some offline data, service worker and cache enabled.

Whats their pain point?

This is the important part of my research, at the end we have to give usable and user friendly application. Such that, farmer will install, use this, make frequent activities, ask questions, create queries, stick to this.

1. Accessibility varies according to the user. Considering this typography, color, font-family, line-height, gutter space, iconography etc. are done.
2. One interesting thing captured, they prefer the dark colors and the hard colors for font, a slighter large font, high contrast, larger touch base to make click easy.
3. More line height to read easily. One of the reason behind this is the Visual Impairment.
4. Usually the farmers on field need the color are per the daylight and easy to understand at that contrast, and when they are in home. The light intensity is to low to make impact of colors. This is the learning point for me to do research on the color selection.
5. Farmers usually prefer the icons rather than text, more likely they want the real objects, illustrations, colored icons to guess the things going behind these icons.
6. Farmers said they are feel annoyed when the application throws the push notifications many times, here we planned a strategy to overcome this.
7. Couple of farmers said, is this possible to talk rather than typing? Another scope for hooking the user. Like Google Assistant, Haptik and Apple Siri.
8. Farmers usually avoid the long signup process. Need to simplify this.
9. Couple of farmers face difficulty to initiate a conversation. Need to simplify this.
10. Farmers feels irritating with the other advertisement, full screen advertisements.
11. As like other user, Farmers also look for clean structure, navigation flow, clear visual design with transitions to make interaction. But with minimal distraction.
12. A unique thing said, Is this possible to listen the contents like Weather alert, tips, general information? This is really cool, means.
13. Farmers want specific crop data, knowledge, advisory rather than mixed crop. Filtration and customization is will solve their pain.

User can only explain his pain. A good User Interface is incomplete without User Research.

What they want from Agronomy Experts and Software?

1. Farmers are curious to know about the Health of crop, Pesticides, Fertilizers, Weather updates, Mandi prize and more things.
2. A farmer given an example, they have same size of land from last 20 years, but productivity is increased 4 times with new methods of farming.
3. Modernization is the key thing they are adopting. They want to make more productivity from same land.
4. Since, product is going to deliver the solutions by best practice, Artificial Intelligence, Chat-bots, Knowledge base, Forum platform and advisory on call.

User Flow for Signup and Chatbot

5. Application must guide user to flow fluently, wherever user go, there must be a loop, eye catching, user interest gathering and good interaction to make user happy. Weather its community, forum, chatbot, knowledge base, profile, experts. I’m making complete user journey with delight.

User journey, flow, wireframing and interaction points on screens

As a product designer, I have to make this compatible with all these with minimal size and best practice for Android platform.

How to make application usable as per their requirement?

Since, we gathered bunch of knowledge from farmers, they have give lot of inputs. Now while making the product, I have taken 30+ crucial check-list to keep and to avoid on our product released. Currently in UAT, we are testing the things, verifying the things, doing compatibility, scalability test to make this best.

As my part from User Research to Product design, I have done a check-list on “How UX design is going to make the product successful?”. This is surely going to help other Product Designers and Startups to meet with the initial phase of research.

1. Increasing the conversion rates.
2. Making the content rich with UX simplification.
3. More user friendly application.
4. Making user to visit again and stick with app.
5. Consistent design experience and micro interaction.
6. User’s mobile phone configuration, performance, speed, accessibility and network.
7. Customization of product as per User interest.
8. Improving the app with analytics, reports and research.
9. Solving the problems with complex AI with simplified UX.

Will share the next docs on UX Strategy, User flow, Wire-frames, User interactions and Touch points. Would like to have your claps on my article. If you think it worth your time, then clap at least 10times.