Agoro Carbon Assessment Tool
Changing farming practices to climate-positive crops, from soil to consumer.
Brief
Agoro (part of Yara International) was looking to create a new tool as part of their effort to decarbonise farming. The tool would help agronomists before and during their meeting with farmers to illustrate the benefits of joining one of Agoro's programs.
Based on data provided by Yara international amongst others, the assessment tool would help agronomists assess decarbonisation opportunities of specific fields within a farm. Agronomists would suggest practice changes and produce a summary report given to the farmer during a meeting.
MVP Flow
Learning about farming and carbonisation was a steep learning curve. Unlike with other projects, we did not have a user flow until weeks into this intense 2 month project. We spent the first few weeks drawing general wireframes based on huge assumptions. We needed feedback from agronomists and farmers on what information is critical to them and how best to communicate it.
Once we leaned the basics, we were ready to design the user flow. This too was based on assumptions and we have made drastic changes to both the flow and the tool's architecture until the last minute. The end result is a product that agronomists can use easily and farmers fully understand.
My Role
I was one of 2-3 UX designers and worked on the project from the beginning to the two-month deadline. During that time, the other UX designers in the team have changed every two to three weeks, and I helped keep them up to date and educate them on the Agoro terminologies.
What I did
To better understand what information agronomists need in order to make their assessment, we conducted market research into similar tools. Based on our research we produced a number of sketches which we then translated into 4 key screens. We presented those screens to agronomists and asked for user feedback.
We also spoke to farmers and quickly learned that from their perspective, there are 2 possible scenarios: some farmers might want to see a comparison of different fields within their farm, whilst others were more suspicious and therefor only willing to provide information of 1 field. Showing a comparison of multiple fields with complex data layers was a design challenge we welcomed.
Collaborating with the rest of the design and research team, we created rapid prototyping iterations based on user interviews and testings. We had testing sessions up to four times a week and design iterations 2-3 times following those session feedbacks.
At the end of the field data analysis, an agronomist would discuss current farming practices with the farmer. Based on the information the farmer provides, the agronomist would use the assessment calculation to product a report. The report would illustrate how the farmer would benefit from the practice changes both financially and environmentally.
My initial concept designs below show a very high level infographic style approach. Based on user feedback, this has changed to show a more numeric based report as can be ween in the final designs below.
Results
We were able to launch a working MVP for agronomists to use in the field during their meetings within the given 2 months timeline. The tool is one of several developed by Agoro to help farmers be more carbon smart world wide.
While access to the tool is strictly for Agoro employees, you can view one of the prototypes we tested with our users below.
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