LEVELING UP...
…the way viticulturalists collect vine health data.
skills used
product design, researcH & user testing, prototyping
team
Lead designer, product designer (me)
duration
2 months (spring 2020)
IMpact
Reduced time spent on vine tracking by 75%.
deliverables
hi-fidelity designs, prototype
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Intro
OVERVIEW...
Harlan Estates is a vineyard located in Oakville, California with an estate of 240 acres. With bottles that average just over $1,000, ensuring the best wine quality is achieved through tracking the health of individual vines through the course of the season.
Before this project, there was no easy and efficient way for Harlan field employees to track vine health data. This lack of efficiency caused a delay down the line of processes that lead to harvesting decisions, capping the wine quality potential that Harlan aimed to achieve. I set out with the goal to address the following question:
"How might we streamline the vine health tracking experience for Harlan field workers so that harvesting decisions from analyzed data could be made earlier?"
CONSTRAINTS...
Harlans limited budget as well as their need to finish this project before the next season gave us two months to finish our designs in time for development. This, and the fact that this project is an extension of the existing Trimble's Agriculture mobile app, the visuals and patterns used were constrained to the existing design system.
design process
We interviewed Harlans Lead Viticulturalist and field workers to understand the pain points and goals of what Harlan wanted to achieve with this application.
research
After collecting insights from Harlan, we defined the information architecture. We created some wireframes to iterate on with the Lead Viticulturalist.
Define & design
We created a prototype to user test, testing regularly between iterations to make changes to the experience to best fit their goals.
Test
Once we finalized the wireframes, we created hi-fidelity designs as well as a hi-fi prototype to hand off to our dev team.
Refine and handoff
RESEARCH...
We interviewed Harlans Lead Viticulturalist, field workers, and other viticulturalists to understand the pain points and goals of what Harlan wanted to achieve with this app for both their harvesting decisions as well as their field workers, the key findings from those meetings were:
Harlan wanted to increase efficiency in collecting vine health data.
Field workers would collect vine health data via a paper form that they would fill out as they observed and tracked the health of each vine. These forms could sometimes become misplaced.
Viticulturists wanted to view health data as soon as possible.
Field workers would collect vine health data via a paper form that they would fill out as they observed and tracked the health of each vine. These forms could sometimes become misplaced.
Viticulturists wanted to view health data as soon as possible.
The delay of having to input paper forms into their system affected how quickly they could react to pest/disease outbreaks, as well as optimum harvest timing.
Harlan planned to install RFID tags at every vine.
This, paired with a receiver that allows a mobile phone to get accurate GPS data down to a 2 cm error would allow Harlan employees to track a specific vines health instantaneously upon entering a two meter range within the vine.
DEFINE...
Using what I learned from the meeting with the Lead Viticulturist, I defined the information architecture.
DESIGN...
Much of the early stage took place in the sketches and wireframe stages. The UI/UX Lead and I conducted a Crazy 8 sketch brainstorming session to quickly iterate and build on ideas. We we would explain our design decisions and vote on the top 2 screens, then iterate on those further. We repeated this process 3 times for all screens.
These were the sketches that the Lead Designer (left sketch) and I (right sketch) agreed being the best to use as a starting point for our wireframes for the primary page. From here, presented these wireframes to the Lead Viticulturalist, making updates at each iteration to best fit the goals of the user goals. We repeated this process until all the wireframes met the goals of the field workers as well as all the other stakeholders. These were the final wireframes for the main workflow:
Status form view
This screen allows users to quickly set the status of the vine once a vine is detected. The tap targets of the statuses were large, as field workers wore gloves.
Map view
Users can view their location on the vineyard and see the progress of which vines that data has been collected for. Users can also look at data for previous years.
PHOTO NOTATION
If users observes factors that can damage a vine like vole/pest damage, disease, etc., this screen allows users to take photos and make a note.
photo gallery
This screen allows users to view a log of photos for a specific vine, allowing Harlan to track health progress and analyze results of any measures taken.
TEST...
Once the wireframes were finalized, we created a wireframe prototype to test with users, conducting 3 rounds of user testing. After collecting feedback, we took and applied the key findings to our designs.
REFINE...
We continued refining the experience with the feedback we received in between rounds of user testing, leading us to the final designs:
OUTRO
IMPACT...
In the end, we reached the 2 month deadline and was able to hand this off to the developers to begin building the extension in time for Harlans next harvest season. Their first season using this extension was 2021, and the impact this extension had on Harlan's vine health data collection time was reduced by 75%.
RETRO...
After releasing this first version, there were many things to improve upon later versions, such as:
•
Creating roles so that Lead Viticulturalists can view data more easily. Currently, they can export all data into a CSV file, but creating a separate role for those who view and analyze data would be very beneficial.
•
Our decision to stay within the Trimble Ag design system was the only possible way to make an MVP in time for Harlans next harvesting seasons. After some discussion, we decided to eventually move this tracking function to a standalone application. This would allow us to refresh the look and feel while we improve and add other functions.