#CaseStudy — AgriXpert, One Stop Agri Solution
In this pandemic era, people need to keep their sanity by doing so many things, have a new hobby, or just doing back to what they like before. One of them is farming, caring for plants. Farming now becomes easier no matter where you are, either in the urban city or the traditional farmer in the village you can still become a farmer/gardener.
The Main Goal & Role
I worked on this project as a Product Designer (alone) for my client (PT. Pupuk Sriwijaya) to create a more seamless experience of farming consultation and increase the buying of their fertilizer product.
Process Overview
1. Understanding Problems
I go deep dive into the initial problem to gather a better understanding of the problem scope, what’s my client problem wants to solve, who’s their target market of the app.
Initially, the client wanted to target the application to smallholders with only palm, corn, and rice commodities, but I tried to approached and make a validation “is this application really workable/implementable for them?” because as far as I know, they are still in the poor (underprivileged) category for using the gadget. So I took a different angle to general farmers like urban farmers or simply people who like to grow a plant.
User Research
I started by looking for some people who actively farming/gardening and make an interview asking some questions.
- What is the biggest difficulty in finding the right fertilizer for your soil & plants?
- How do you find out the best fertilizer for your plants?
- How was your experience dealing with the pests/diseases you found?
- How do you find out a pest/disease?
- What do you do when you discover a new crop pest/disease?
There are several problems that are experienced simultaneously and I created the empathy map based on the answer from the interview.
2. Define Problems
With the insights that I find throughout the interview and empathy map, I re-define the initial problem to clarify the real pain points
- How they get the best fertilizer for their plant?
- How do they know what pests/diseases are on their plant and how to treat/eradicate them?
- How can they consult with experts immediately on how to care for plants that are good and right?
3. Ideate Solutions
As I now have understood the problems profoundly, I can start to build a solution that tackles the issues.
Finding The Best Fertilizer
I made the form as simple as possible. Instead of using a form to find out the name of the plant, I just made it based on the land/soil, leaf color, and age of the plant. Why? Because there are still many people who mispronounce (confused) the name/type of plant they plant. The business of my client goes here, they market their product. If users click on buy, it’ll directly go to their e-commerce app.
Pest/Disease Solution
To make it easier to access detect pests/diseases, I created a CTA button in the bottom navigation bar for plant scanning because that is the main feature. People don’t need to access the “Solusi Hama” page first, on that page only common pests/diseases occur in plants. In the how-to handle pest/disease, I bring up pesticide/drug products so that users can directly buy these products, on the other side its increases the client’s marketing products.
Consultation with Expert
On the consultation page, I created some frequently asked questions (basic questions) are in the form of short reading/articles. For the credibility of the expert, I made their biography it includes their education and where are they working now, and their areas of expertise. Initially, the client hasn’t in mind to business the consultation feature, but I offer an idea to make it business with free and big discount in the beginning. Because I see this feature is haven’t a competitor yet in Indonesia so it’s a fresh idea.
4. Prototype Ideas
Developing a high-fidelity screen design to implement the ideas into tangible digital forms. This is where the users can interact directly with the product to provide feedback.
Testing and Validate the Idea
After the whole design screen is done, I do a validating (indirectly usability test) at the end of the process. I give the targeted user of the app some scenarios/tasks to be done and get the results:
“Uh, the form in searching fertilizer is too much. I’m too lazy”
“It’s good, but the design looks not fun, it’s like so older people”
“Awesome, I can know directly what my plant has a pest/disease and know how to take care of it. Seamless”
“I really like on how to handle pest/disease, I can get the cure right now and don’t need to finding it in other e-commerce/market”
The Outcome and Personal Key Takeaway
I’m really glad and proud working on this project, I’m helping the client to see a different angle, helping them with a business idea, and the important is the end-user of their user market is helped with this product/app.
“Start from facts and work with raw materials”
Before I ask and interview targeted users, I’m really struggling to see what problem the client is trying to solve. They just come with a simple brief (wanted Agri consulting product) and the scope of application will be developed. So I look more at facts, data, and raw materials from research, processing them into a conclusion/validation of the assumptions I have.
