Agrii- An Agriculture App and my first UX case study.
✨Exciting news: “AGRII” designs have been chosen to be included in DesignRush’s The Best Agriculture App Designs, a fantastic platform that highlights the best design ideas. ✨
This problem statement was given in one of the design challenges.
Knowing the project
Overview
Agrii is a minimalist app designed for farmers that gives an overview of their fields from anywhere.
This design is not limited to farmers but agriculturists too can use this app to read about the soil nutrients of the desired field. Before I started with this design I didn’t have much idea of agriculture and its technology.
So I took the help of many papers and websites to first come through how basically sensors are used in the farming field for reading about the soil to make it more and more fertile.
Knowing the problem
Problem
India’s arable land for 2016 was 156,463,000, a 0% increase from 2015. The below report is showing the arable area of India from 1961 to 2015.
SOURCE: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/arable-land
Out of 140 million hectares of land, only 40% of it is irrigated properly. This is the sad truth of farming, there are many states in India that don’t have a good or proper source of water supply. Even if the water supply is good more often water fails to reach the field on time or sometimes there is no water to reach.
Farming is not only about water, it’s about Soil as well. Agriculture has been the foremost important field of technology. The only goal is to help the agriculturists to know what is better for farmers and their farms. Introducing smart farming to farmers has somehow made things easier for them but still, there is a long way to go.
The Solution
Solution
I was looking to follow an approach that will not only help farmers on normal days but also in harsh situations like what today we are facing because of the coronavirus.
1. Smart farming is good but somehow it is slowly getting accepted around the country. An interface that will provide all details about the soil and will display notification regarding any maintenance will be the best flavor I guess(I know there must be plenty of apps in the market, this is just my idea of design).
2. During the pandemic a number of things went digitalized, farming is one field that can’t be on the digital platform wholly but a small part of it can be.
3. A User Interface with a minimalist design can give power to the farmer to control activities of the field at their own ease.
Research and Findings
Smart farming has somehow made things easier for farmers, but it will be useful and worthy only if it is accepted all around India. Imagine a time when smart farming is the only farming done in the whole of India. If it is channeled properly, it will save time for farmers and agriculturists so that they can invest their time in learning more about other technologies, crops, or anything they like.
For designing the app I thought of considering one irrigation type as well. Hence I concluded the “Sprinkler Irrigation” for this app. For now, the app design will display data related to the field and will help to switch ON and OFF the motor pump for irrigation.
Due to the pandemic and lockdown, the only source for me to get to know the farmer’s pain was journals and Research papers written by talented people from all around India.Note: I will put all the links below so you too can read them.
I followed Lean UX
Before starting with more extensive research on the solution and design, I decided to follow one design framework which will keep me on track. So I chose the Lean UX process. As I was working solely on this project and because of the time constraint I didn’t have much time to sit and do the research work and then decide what to do.
The lean approach somehow made things easier for me as just after getting enough details and knowing about the problem started with the low-fidelity design. I could iterate each process again and again till I concluded my final design.
User Persona
After researching and reading through the journal papers and a number of websites on Indian farming and Irrigation I came up with the below-mentioned User Persona which helped me through the process of designing the app.
Information Architecture
This is the rough blueprint for working on the design of Agrii. This flow helped me to figure out if some screen is missing or if something more can be added which will be full of benefits with less confusing screens.
Wireframe
The next step that I followed was to do a quick wireframe design to figure out the layout well suited for the minimalistic design of the app.
Wireframe 1
Wireframe 2
Wireframe 3
Final Designs
How does it work?
Agrii is a prototype that will help mostly farmers and agriculturists to know their land better. Before I could start the design process I had to think about how exactly data are collected about the soil and how water irrigation works in the field.
While doing my research work for this project I came across some papers and articles on Medium which gave me a complete overview of Environment data collection i.e. Soil moisture, Soil Temperature, Wind speed, etc.
Considering a system that is used in the field to collect data and help the farmer control the motor for the water irrigation through a User Interface, I started with my designing part.
In short, I wanted to design an Interface where users would be able to see daily data about their field and notifications and at the same time control the motor for pumps from anywhere.
Starter Screens
The idea is once the app is downloaded a person is asked to register by just entering their name, mobile number, and password. The phone number will lead the user to do one-time password verification which will help the user to easily log in by just entering the phone number and password.
Onboarding Messages
A design with a quick tour or just some onboarding messages explains to users how an application will be helpful and useful for them. My view was that 3 onboarding messages would be enough for users to feel welcomed and not bored. So I try to keep the message with fewer words and more meaning.
Home
The Home or Dashboard is a screen where users can see the soil temperature, and the humidity of the soil. The notifications will also be displayed here which would help users to take action according to the priority.
Controls
The control screen will have the image of the map of the user field area that they want to look after. A B and C are the names of the Nodes. Nodes here I have considered as a Hub for collecting data. By clicking on Circle A, B, or C screens will change accordingly. Each Node screen has its own Motor On and Off button. The motor Off button will remain disabled until and unless the On button is not clicked.
Controls Motor On
Once the Motor button is pressed, the Node screen will appear with the Motor Off button.
Add Image
The Add Image screen will help the user to Upload or Update the New and Old images respectively. This image will be basically an image of the area under the Node. (Please remember only the area which falls under Nodes can only be monitored .)For Updation, only uploading of images is needed. The user has to enter a name for the New Image. Here we are considering the name of the image as the name of the Node.
Success Message and Updated Gallery
After uploading the image a successful message screen will appear which fades out in a few seconds and takes the user to the next page i.e. The gallery page.
Conclusion
My parting note
There is always some space for updating. Keeping that in mind, I will look for more and try to recollect more data in the future to make the app more affordable and easy to use. Please feel free to give feedback. So that I will try to do better next time.Thank You in advance!