BACKGROUND

POMETA is a business unit under ADDIUM, formerly known as METER Group, a world leader in air and water quality and crop management sensors used in cross-industrial research agencies, agriculture, and food.

Breaking through the Ag Tech industry, Pometa is enhancing Precision Agriculture for farmers by combining localized weather modeling and computer vision to analyze a grower's crop in one place.

Pometa needed a mobile app that is easily operatable and accessible on the field and a web platform that displays in-depth collected data and models. This project had three phases. The first is the localized weather, the second incorporates computer vision and the third is viewing all that data on the web. I was involved from the concept to the final product.

TIMELINE

September 2021 to March 2023

ROLE

UX/ UI Designer

TOOLS

Pen & Paper, Miro, Figma, Draw.io, Photoshop

MY ROLE

My role was the primary UX/UI designer for this project. I worked closely with the product owner and the development team. I assisted the product owner in conceptualizing and designing the POMETA weather and the vision app. I created deliverables representing the product experience through user journeys, personas, wireframes/flows, presentation visuals, and low- to high-fidelity prototypes. I also organized team workshops to drive agendas between the cross-functional teams to prioritize tasks, find opportunities, risk assessment, and assist in project planning. I also had to undertake the Quality Assurance role while products were in development. I shaped and updated the current design system and made new icons and components while maintaining internal consistency across the ADDIUM platforms.

▹ DISCOVER

THE RESEARCH

I worked closely with a product owner with a background in the agricultural fruit industry; this research aims to validate the product owner's ideas of the users' needs. Some of the project's constraints were that we were a small team, launching a product in a very short timeline, and the requirements were constantly changing. Note that with the changing needs, it was also essential to go back to researching and user interviews.

Diving into what the growers do in a high-density orchard, I needed to know the tools and jobs they use to manage their crops and when? What is their most significant pain point, and how are they mitigating their issues? I compared other platforms, services, and apps that the growers use for their orchards to understand what data points are significant and how POMETA and ADDIUM, with their advanced weather station and computer vision, could get consumer buy-in. Below are some processes I learned to understand the users' motivations and who they could be.

Understanding the process

Precision crop load management flow in a growing season.

Apple phenology model Image from mdpi.com

Chemical Thinning Processs

Possible target audience

Nick

Orchard Manager

I want to be able to accurately see weather data that is relevant to my farm/orchard. So that I can plan, take action to prevent crop damage, loss and over exertion of my labor force

Jeff

Consultant

As a consultant, I want to accurately know what is happening in the orchard so that I can make recommendations for the best possible solution for my clients and prevent the loss of their crop, and increase their potential earnings.

Anita

Laborer

I need to be able to see the status of the farm so that I can anticipate what jobs need to be done and if I've done my task.

▹ DEFINE

THE PROBLEM

After narrowing down ideas from the product owner and user interviews, here are the two issues that the growers are facing:

Growers are not accurately managing their crop load, which makes their projection yields inaccurate or unpredictable.
Growers are using multiple sources to get weather data that may not be specific enough to their location to mitigate frost damage.

How can we help the growers get ahead so they can make informed decisions to take action to hone their precision crop load management and have product adoption into their daily workflow?

PERSONAS:

As the project progressed, there were some refinements to our target audience, and it became a more focused one, the Orchard Manager, Orchard Consultant, and Farm Hand.

Primary

Doug Frazer, 39

Orchard Manager

“I want to see what’s going on in my farm, to know what jobs needed to be done”

Secondary

John Wicker, 47

Consultant

“ I just want to see the numbers to make a plan and take action. To save money and time.”

Tertiary

Antonio Gomez, 22

Laborer

“ I need to be able to do my job at the orchard efficiently throughout the growing season, and I want to know when my job is done.”

Key Takeaways:

After analyzing the refined personas and user flows, we deduced that a mobile app is needed for our farm hand's portability and ease of use. And a web app would be more useful on a desktop or laptop screen where our consultant and orchard manager can view data in-depth.

THE SOLUTION

The solution is to incorporate our product into the users' workflow to give them localized accurate weather modeling to make informed weather-related decisions, such as mitigating freezing of the crops, when to spray, and when hot weather will be an issue. Another key is using computer vision to count and size fruit and see the overall well-being of their orchard. There is a need to show complex data from the weather station and data collected from computer vision, aiding the orchard manager and consultant in making these informed decisions.

PROJECT PLANNING

In the project planning workshop, in collaboration with the development team and the product owner, the solution needed three phases due to the project constraints of a tight timeline and development resources.

Phase 1: Weather Mobile App

Phase 2: Vision app

Phase 3: Crop load data on the web.

▹ DESIGN

The goal is simplicity, consistency, intuitive, intelligent, and has a great user experience across the three phases.

PHASE 1: MOBILE WEATHER APP

Lo-Fi Sketches in Discovery

Progression

PHASE 2: VISION APP

Lo-Fi Sketches in Discovery

Progression

PHASE 3: CROP LOAD DATA

Progression

▹ DELIVER

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WHAT'S NEXT?

Recommendations:

As we speak, the web and mobile are in production; my recommendations are:

Catching up on UI debt to ensure that the products are fast and our users can finish their tasks and reach their goals.
Continuously get user and customer support feedback to see their pain points.
Perform a regular audit to ensure that internal consistency is maintained.

REFLECTION

What did I learn? 🤔

This project has been a challenge from the beginning. It was a new business unit for the company, so we were starting from the ground up. The product owner had a set of requirements and a deadline that we had to meet—this limited research time. Workshops and multiple design sprints were necessary to translate user needs into something we could develop. After every sprint, user testing was rolled out to actual users and internal stakeholders to validate some of our assumptions. This process continued at every phase.

There was never a dull moment with this project. I had to step into a role that facilitated alignment with development, design, and stakeholders—organizing workshops, design sprints, assisting with PRDs, and planning. I've had a hand at every step of the process, which was a learning experience.

▹

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