Project Overview
Throughout the semester, the team collaborated with the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. The client represented the broccoli industry as a whole whose overall mission was to help the broccoli industry grow by increasing transparency in the broccoli supply chain thereby improving broccoli supply chain actors’ knowledge of the product condition.
The project as stated by the client is to create an app which alerts users when remaining shelf life of broccoli reaches different threshold levels. The app will retrieve data files provided by the user on a cloud server and produce correlations between temperature readings at different points of the supply chain and the remaining shelf-life of the product. The app should be able to generate predictions based on these correlations and allow for warnings to be sent to users when shelf-life thresholds are reached.
The end users of this project are the supply chain actors, with a primary focus on the farmers and the retailers. These end users are often busy and require a method of receiving updates and warnings at various locations.
The Team
The team consisted of six people:
Andrew Gordon, a designer and the Scrum master for the team; Aizel Redulla, who specialised in UX Design and Linguistics; William Cornish, Taari Meiners and Adrian Van Katwyk, full-stack software developers forming the dev team and me, a Software Engineering student with skills in User Experience and Interface Design
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The team was well-rounded and had a good balance of designers and developers. Aizel, Andrew and myself worked on the design whereas William, Taari and Adrian worked on the development of the application.
The design process was kicked off by developing user personas. This was achieved by interactions with potential users who were introduced to us by the client, and information provided to us during these meetings.
Once the user personas were developed, they were used to develop user stories for the the user base -- farmers and retailers.
Basic Low-fidelity Wireframes
User Interaction Flow Diagram
User Interface Design
The Adobe XD Prototype can be found here.
User Testing
The user testing was conducted using a moderated usability testing model where the user was observed while being asked to perform a series of tasks, operations or navigations within the designed application. The metric used for the testing was Time-on-Task. This type of approach was best suited as it allowed the team to gather more raw information that is able to be more easily analysed than surveys or interviews, while still retaining the benefit of being able to ask the user why they made certain decisions or for general feedback upon conclusion.
It is also worth noting that other testing models such as beta testing or focus groups were not considered to not be viable due to limited resources and availability of the tested application.
These tests were carried out in an isolated environment where the observer was able to easily monitor the user’s actions and decisions while performing the tests. Issues that arose during testing included the application encountering an unexpected error, in which case the interface was reset and the user was simply be asked to perform the task again.
Testing Overview
Test subjects were picked from stakeholders we were in contact with as well as people from outside the Advanced IT Project who had a technological ability that was considered to be similar to the farmers. All scenarios are conducted from the perspective of the persona: Bernard Johnston.
Scenarios
Scenario 1:
Bernard Jonston has been wanting to keep track of his crops that are from some of his most recent harvests. He also wants to share his progress with some of his business contacts. He needs to login to Brocc and look at the detailed shelf life data for his past month of produce. He then needs to share the data he is viewing.
Scenario 2:
Bernard Jonston wants to look at his previous supply chain data from 3 months ago to compare to his current stock. He needs to login to Brocc and change the date that the supply chain inventory to 3 months ago.
Scenario 3:
Bernard Jonston needs to send an alert to contacts in the supply chain due to a problem with his crop. He needs to login to Brocc and send an alert to the supply chain.
Scenario 4:
Bernard Jonston needs to turn on push notifications so that he can see alerts from the supply chain. He needs to login to Brocc and enable push notifications on the app.
Scenario 5:
Bernard Jonston needs to enable sharing settings for a new retailer with which they are wanting to do business. He needs to login to Brocc and enable pesticide spray history and shelf life history in sharing settings.
Method
These tests were carried out in an isolated environment where the observer was able to easily monitor the user’s actions and decisions while performing the tests. Issues that arose during testing included the application encountering an unexpected error, in which case the interface was reset and the user was simply be asked to perform the task again.
Metrics
Metrics that the test was run against will be the time it takes the user to complete the test and the amount of times they needed to ask for help. A test was be considered to be ‘failed’ if a user took more than the allocated time for that test and all tests were considered ‘failed’ if a user needed to ask for help more than once.
The findings of the user results indicated that the app performed well from a usability standpoint. None of the tested users failed any of the given task scenarios, however some did need to ask for help at some point or experience mild confusion during their testing, but all users still completed the task within the allocated time. Some of the feedback received included that the date changing drop down menu was too small to reliably press on mobile devices, this was changed in further development to be enlarged for quality of life. Another user noted that the calendar icon in the supply chain menu was difficult to identify as a button with functionality.
This was addressed by adding shadowing to the icon to clarify it as a button. Lastly one other user offered the feedback that the contacts in the sharing menu didn't seem clickable at first, however this was left unaddressed as the user was able to figure out and complete the task scenario despite their difficulty and no other user experienced this difficulty.
Reflections and Future Improvements
Given the low-technology background of farmers, coming up with an easy-to-use and intuitive design seemed to be a challenge for the team at the start. From getting to learn about how the agricultural sector works in terms of the supply chain to current best practices that are deployed to ensure a profitable yield, working with our clients from the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries was a uniquely rewarding experience in itself for me.
The design of the application required the explore the problem sphere of a field that nobody had a background in, and brainstorming for solutions required looking at things from a farmer’s perspective. The design phase involved stepping into a farmer’s shoes, empathising with their problems and coming up with solutions that cater to their needs. This is when I learnt the importance of empathy in design.
Design improvements that have been identified include using UI kits to improve the design of the application, as well as conducting more intensive rounds of user testing for the application.
