AgriDigital is an AgTech startup that built a grain management platform for Growers, Site Operators, Brokers and Traders. As we helped different personas achieving their goal on the platform, it became apparent that the need to attach documents to the artefacts created on the platform was quite high.
ROLE
Led the end-to-end design process, working closely with Product and Engineering
THE PROBLEM
Users need to be able to attach documents to their Orders, Contracts, Deliveries, Invoices to reduce paperwork, waiting times and to keep all their documents in one place. This would allow them to easily share their artefacts as well as attached document to third parties.
One complexity that quickly arose was that many people use AgriDigital on a daily basis, most of whom are not tech-savvy and have unique use cases. To improve the platform, it was essential to understand these use cases and become more familiar with the users' overall environment.
We wanted to allow users to attach documents, but we needed to understand why they needed this functionality and how they previously added documents to the platform.
After interviewing and collaborating with customer-facing team members and reviewing previously gathered user feedback, I identified our main users' goals.
Once the why was understood, I found essential to write down hypothesis to ensure that all possible scenarios could benefit from this new feature.
Overall, it was important to accommodate all use cases. Especially during busy times such as harvest, users can be extremely busy and created dozens of artefacts a day. It was essential to create a very intuitive and easy to use feature.
After listing all the hypothesis and different scenarios, I synthesised them into user stories. I then used these user stories as a base to create a user flow and mapped what the experience should look like for our users. This helped understand how they would interact and ensured a consistent user experience.
Designing a new feature on the AgriDigital platform poses a major challenge: ensuring that users who are not familiar with technology can use the feature with ease. To achieve this, the first step is to design an interface that looks familiar to users who have used other platforms in the past.
In addition, I identified essential usability points to ensure that users can intuitively navigate through the process and resolve any errors that may arise.
A few user testings later, and most testing scenarios were validated. One needed some more design work, but the results were overall very encouraging.
The feature was finally available in beta testing, which ensured that it worked for all users and could accommodate all use cases. After 2 weeks, users were sent a survey which resulted in a score of 3.2 out of 5. The ease of of attaching documents and the ability for all users in their organisation to see the attached documents were the highlights of this feature.
Drag and drop zone and an upload button so all users can choose the option that works best for them
Users can see the details of their attached documents, select their document type and decide whether their document need to be shared
Even after the artefact has been completed, users can keep attaching or managing documents
Attached documents are easy to find from the artefact table
Can be used on mobile for users we knew were more likely to attach pictures from the field
Using customer research, collaboration, and testing, we developed a feature that is still being used daily three months after its launch.