Agoro Carbon Assessment Tool
Changing farming practices to climate-positive crops, from soil to consumer.
Brief
Agoro, part of Yara International, set out to create a new tool to support its mission of decarbonising agriculture. The assessment tool would help agronomists identify carbon reduction opportunities for individual fields and communicate the financial and environmental benefits of participating in Agoro's programs.
Using data from Yara and other sources, agronomists could model practice changes and generate reports that farmers could use to better understand the impact of those decisions.
MVP Flow
Agriculture and carbon modelling presented a steep learning curve, and many assumptions had to be validated before a meaningful workflow could emerge. Rather than committing to a process too early, we used the first weeks of the project to explore concepts and gather feedback from agronomists and farmers.
As our understanding of the domain matured, the workflow evolved significantly. Continuous research and testing shaped both the information architecture and the assessment experience, resulting in a tool that agronomists could confidently use in the field and farmers could easily understand.
My Role
I was one of two to three UX designers involved throughout the project and remained with the team from discovery to delivery. As team members rotated during the two-month engagement, I helped maintain continuity by sharing domain knowledge and ensuring a consistent understanding of Agoro's terminology and workflows.
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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