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Duration
November - December 2021
Role
UX and UI Designer
Type
Responsive website
Tools
Figma
Goal
To help farmers sell their crops, livestocks and tools directly to
consumers without involvement of middlemen
Why Kisan?
They say farmers are born in debt, live in debt and die in debt
As agriculture is the backbone of India, and farmers plays a crucial role in society. Farmers are facing problems from middlemen, weather issue, storage scarcity for crops grown, all these leads them to take wrong decision about ending their life. It is imporatnt to help farmer in a way where they can get a proper pay for the crop grown.Some of the reasons are:
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) earlier released data that showed an 18 percent increase in agriculture labourer suicides.
The reasons stated behind their suicides were — debt, low produce prices, family responsibilities, increased cost of cultivation and crop failure.
Prices can be wildly erratic and middlemen form organizations and eat up much of the profits.
Challenge
Many farmers don't have the option of selling their crops, livestocks or tools directly to customers, and many farmers don't even know that they can sell their crops. Below are some of the problems that farmers face,
Current agricultural websites or apps is limited to certain region
Language barrier for farmers to function
No option to sell crops, livestocks and tools at one place
Solution
A responsive website for farmers that would make the above problems easier and delightful experience.
Design Process
User research
As farmers are the main in this project, and solving their problems is the utmost priority and challenging task, so instead of jumping straight away into conducting interview to know about their problems, I wanted to think of what exactly I want to solve and what right information do I need inorder for the better understanding of the prompt and to have an in depth knowledge of the problems.
I created 5Ws to have clear idea and to know exactly what I want to focus on during 1:1 interaction with the farmers.
5Ws
What
To provide an direct contact between producer and consumer to sell their crops, livestocks and equipments
Why
Less pay due to the involvement of middlemen during selling crops and no proper platform to sell livestocks and equipments
Who
Farmers who want to see their crops, livesocks and equipments
Where
During the occassion of sale in the market and during no proper platform to sell livestocks and euipments
When
Each time a farmer want to sell their crops, livestocks and equipments
Interview
For the purpose of collecting user data, I interviewed 5 farmers over a call and some with video call to discuss and to determine their "pains and gains", and to understand what difficulties they are facing regarding low pay and also advantages and disadvantages of middlemen involvement.
Interview mode
Virtual interview
Length
30 - 45 minutes
Participants
5 partcipants
Questions that were asked?
What are the causes for increase in farmers debt and suicide?
Do middlemen is necessary or not?
What is the role of middlemen in selling crops?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of having middlemen?
Why farmers pay is low?
Why do you want to have direct contact with consumers?
What are the measures or features you need to have a direct contact with customer?
Highlights of responses
"I need a right platform to sell my crops and livestocks directly to customers"
Manish, 25
"I need a proper pay for the crops
that I have grown"
Manveer, 32
"I can't feed my family with the current profit, I need other ways "
Rangappa, 50
"I want a way to sell my crops without an involvement of middlemen"
Govardhan, 60
"Selling and buying livestocks, equipments has become a huge problem"
Saleem, 35
Affinity diagram
Understood farmers problems.
As I collected data from interview, further I divided it into four categories which are the main problems, and each category has sub-category which has the response of user regarding main problem. Affinity diagram helps in understanding of problems in more definite way.
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Persona
Found out farmers different motivations and similar needs.
Persona creation was an important step that defined how all the results from the research phase could help me in creating a better app. Furthermore, personas were a communication tool between farmers and me, ensuring that they always have a place within our product when it comes to design decisions.
Information Architecture
Discover the procedures.
I constructed Information Architecture (IA), to represent the application's features and hierarchy. IA delivers a simple and understandable representation of how the application works. There was lot reorganizing at this stage, but I finally arrived at an IA that worked well in representing in the best way possible, of all the information that farmers wanted to know about the application. This IA helped me in having the clear description of what is present in the app and how it works.
User flow
I constructed user flow which is an overview of complete user path that shows the navigation, this helps in understanding the ways user can interact with the product for successful completion of the process. The idea is to create the simple and test it's features with farmers to learn if it provides the value intended.
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Design Process
Explore ideas for implementation.
After all define and ideation phase next is the design phase where the initial process began with sketches and paper wireframes and later moved to high fidelty prototype. Sketching on paper helped me to explore ideas without a limitation, and helped me expand my thinking. I reserached about sketches ideas and asked for suggestions later I incorporated all feedback, suggestions, and some new ideas in the wireframing stage.
Low fidelity prototype
​This was the stage I was most excited for, to digitize wireframes, plan a content strategy, create the visual Identity and build the prototype that would be tested with my target user group.
Next process is low fidelity, after numerous tries I came up with the final design decision of the website where I considered all the factors of user problems and many thoughts about providing best user experience. Below is the connections between screens of the process.
User testing
I conducted an usability test of low fidelity prototype to know whether user can complete the task sucessfully and also to get insignts how users behave with the functionality.
Participants
5 participants
Study Type
Moderated usability study
Length
30 min
Tasks
1. Check all the categories and find the changes needed
2. Add the crop that you want to sell and add all the details
3. Rent an secondhand equipment
4. Sell and buy any one of the category
Insights
1) Many user wanted to have an language selection option so that it would help farmers to select their preferred language.
2) Some of the users suggested not only to rent equipments but also to have an option of selling secondhand equipments.
High fidelity prototype
After low fidelity wireframes, I spent most time in creating high fidelity and came up with an simple design for farmers to use, and based on usability testing insights, changes are incorporated in high fidelity prototype. This was a process of trial and erro. I had to find the right balance between using colour in a delightful manner, and not as overkill. I created many different versions of the main page to identify what would be the best solution. Finally, I settled on one option and created the remaining pages. accordingly.
This high fidelity prototype is designed for both sellers and buyers page for the execution of complete process.
How will this work for sellers?
Farmers who wants to sell crops, livestocks or tools select seller option
1
Select the category that is for sale
2
Add all the details of the selected category
3
Submit the details and sold crop, livestock or tool details will be available in "my booking" option
4
1. Select buyer option
3. This is how cart looks like
2. Select category and fill details
1. Select seller option
2. Select the category to sell
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4. Sold crops, livestocks or tools are shown in "My bookings" option
3. Add all the details of the selected category
How will this work for buyer?
People who want to buy select buyer option
1
Select the category to buy and search required crop, livestock or tool
2
Check all the details of the seller and if interested add details to buy
3
Get in touch with the owner by provided mail or phone number for further negotiation
4
1. Select buyer and category option
3. This is how buyer can find crops to buy
2. Both seller and buyer has language selection option
4. Buyers can find details place order
Same buying process for both livestock and tools
Livestock
Tools
Learnings
After usability testing feedback and changes done, I showed the final design to couple of people like my mentors, friends and family members to have their feedback on how the website works and how they feel using it. This session went on for few days, the total count of people were about 20 and the final results are in numbers like,
96%
of the people liked the features as they found useful of having 3 categories at one place
85%
of the people successfully completed the tasks that was assigned to them
99%
of the people said that they'll use this website or app when it get launched
Reflection
I am really happy for doing this project as it is one of the main problem that India is facing now. I tried my best to bring one of the solution, though it still needs many factors to be considered. I am satisfied with the current result and also I learned so much about farmers issues during this project.
I learnt that as a designer, it is also important to be articulate with your ideas, create rapid prototypes for feedbacks and suggestions where you are explaining a concept, and overall being clear and crisp with your communication and presentation skills.
