Agriculture is a complex world. Granular's farm management software to make it easier for farmers to thrive in it.
THE PROJECT BRIEF
Granular is building a complete farm management platform designed to help growers improve their efficiency, yields, and profits. Their customers are 4th and 5th generation family farms who are looking to scale and professionalize their business.
The goal for my design was to make running a farm easier and help farmers make better decisions about what tasks they should be doing in order to optimize efficiency. My design colleague, Kelly Chiu, and I had 3 weeks to design a scheduling tool that helps farm operations managers assign work to their teams.
MY ROLE
- User Research
- Persona Development
- Sketching & Ideation
- Usability Testing
- Iterative Design
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
One of the most challenging aspects of managing any farm is the dynamic decision-making involved with scheduling daily operations.
There is a lot to take into account when scheduling even just one task. Farm managers have to consider the complexities of land preparation, fertilization, irrigation, and harvesting across hundreds of fields and thousands of acres.
Scheduling-related information changes in real-time based on constraints such as:
- Varying weather conditions
- Geography
- Equipment limitations
- Length of time for tasks
- Availability of personnel
Farmers need a tool that can help them make better decisions when scheduling tasks in order to keep their operations in check.
We sunk our teeth into the mental model of a farm manager, and synthesized some of the key components of the scheduling process.
USER RESEARCH
Interviewing some of Granular's current users helped us understand what the current scheduling tool is lacking.
PERSONAS
THE GOAL: MAKE THE SCHEDULING TOOL SMARTER
We think that a farmer's scheduling tool should do more than just log schedule details. It should inform the scheduling process to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks.
SYNTHESIZE & DEFINE
Bringing our research and ideas together, we honed in on 3 key user flows that guided our design decisions.
HERE'S WHAT WE BUILT
Farmers should have all the information they need in one place so they can make scheduling decisions and changes on the fly.
Our solution focuses on creating a more comprehensive scheduling experience for farmers by providing smart features that make real-time scheduling information changes more accessible and advisable to operations managers.
FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS
We took what the farmers said and focused our energy on designing an end-to-end scheduling solution that streamlines farm operations.
Our hope is that our deeply thoughtful features will allow farm managers to spend less time worrying about scheduling, and more time bettering their business's efficiency in other ways.
