The Company
Wexus is an AgTech company that builds SAAS software to help farmers manage their energy, water and other natural resources. Their goal is to help growers save money, time, energy, and water.
My Role
User Research, Personas, User Interviews, User Journey, User App Flow, Wireframes, Prototyping and User Testing
The Problem
The third largest operating expense for farmers is energy and roughly 90% of that energy is used to pump water out of the ground to water crops. For years, growers have thought of the cost of irrigation at a fixed cost, one that can be in the high six figures every year. This perception of a fixed cost is a result of an inability to run the complex calculations to predict the future costs of the energy to run their pumps.
The Solution
Create a way to simulate irrigation schedules using cost and weather data
Through the use of complex predictive algorithms and extensive design and user testing to make energy usage easy to understand, I lead the Wexus product team to create the first tool in existence to help growers calculate the energy usage and demand costs of a farms irrigation schedule. By allowing farmers to test different irrigation schedules in advance, they are now able to create schedules that give their crops the water they need but shift the timing of that irrigation to save money saving them tens to hundreds of thousand of dollars.
User Research
A BATTLE BETWEEN THE NEED FOR COST SAVINGS & A FEAR OF LOOSING CROP YIELD
Before even diving into creating this feature, I went into the field and conducted user interviews. These interviews included professionals in the agriculture industry focusing primarily on growers of permanent crops (orchards, vineyards etc.), row crops (berries, lettuce etc.), indoor growers (greenhouses) and dairy farmers to gain a better understanding of the problem. based on those interviews, I was able to create several key personas each with their own list of challenges and objectives.
GENERAL MANAGER
Responsible for general decision-making at the farm level, planning, verifying & overseeing profit & loss including operational costs for all ranches.
Goals: Reduce operational costs. Meet production targets. Meet regulatory requirements for reporting energy and water usage
RANCH MANGER
Ranch managers need to make decisions quickly based on factors outside his control incl. weather, other crop irrigation (on shared or leased lots).
Goals: Reduce Energy, Water, and Labor costs. Improve crop yield in areas under management
SUSTAINABILITY MANGER
Research, analyze and propose solutions to use energy resources more efficiently. Track and report monthly & yearly progress against sustainability targets/ metrics.
Goals: Meet or exceed sustainability goals. Get buy-in from other stakeholders to move forward with projects.
Final Wireframes
Give users a tool to test irrigation schedules so they can see the cost of irrigation at different times of day and weather so they can properly assess risk
The StartING POINT
Growers enter the Cost Calculator by first seeing a particular day of the week. They can navigate to different days if they so choose. For each day they can see the cost of energy for every acre-foot for water they wish to pump at a given time of day as well as the predicted evapotranspiration (ETo) sum, a key weather metric for that time of day.
Adding Irrigation set
The grower can enter the number of hours for a particular irrigation set into one of the four blank entry fields. Upon entering the amount, a blue bar will automatically appear on the chart. The length of the bar dependent of the length of the irrigation set. The position defaults to the cheapest time of day to water. The cost of the irrigation set appears at the bottom.
shifting time
If the grower wishes to shift the time of the set, all he has to do is drag the bar across the chart to the desired time. As the blue bar is shifted, the cost of the irrigation set at the new time is calculated and displayed.
Adding irrigation setS
The grower can add up to four irrigation sets a day if they wish to break up their irrigating scheduled into different parts of the day. The grower can also use the green button to copy irrigation schedules from one day to the next.
weekly view
Once an irrigations schedule for at least one day is set, the grower can toggle back and forth between a daily and weekly view of their irrigation schedule. In the weekly view they can see which days are set for irrigation, how much water will be used and what the weekly and monthly associated costs will be.
Desktop view
While our research showed that most growers would use the calculator on their phone so they could take the schdule out into the field, the cost calculator can also be used on a desktop.
Results
"THIS IS SO USEFUL, I WISH WE COULD USE THIS FOR MORE THAN JUST PUMPS."
- Indoor Horticulturalist in Half Moon Bay, CA
"THIS IS THE COOLEST THING I HAVE SEEN IN THIS SPACE".
- Almond and Dairy Farmer in Visalia, CA
"WE NEED TO SET BUDGET SAVINGS GOALS FOR NEXT YEAR. THIS IS PERFECT FOR ME”
- Sustainability Manager in Napa, CA