UX case study
03
AgUnity Co-op Manager: one part of AgUnity's digital solutions for smallholder agriculture value chains
Product design, design system, web app, mobile app
Timeline: 2023-2024
AgUnity is a technology company committed to driving social impact by developing digital solutions that aim to reduce poverty and support sustainable development in underserved agricultural communities.
THE problem to be solved
Minimize the challenges experienced by smallholder farmers in the value chain, such as:
- Unreliable manual processes for transactions and record-keeping
- Limited opportunities and risk management due to lack of access to financial services
- Unfair prices due to local market volatility
How AgUnity is solving it
By digitizing the smallholder famers value chain.
Starting by digitizing cooperatives and unions to improve their data quality and lower operational inefficiencies. Giving them a way to manage their farmer members’ profiles, production and geolocation data, and any supporting documents, such as contracts, product and process certifications, etc.
Why digitization?
Because having quality, easily processable data streamlines certification processes, demonstrates compliance with regulations, and validates of the quality of their products. These factors are crucial in attracting buyers and negotiating better prices, which directly impacts the improvement of their livelihood.
So to help the farmers we need to go up a step in the value chain and give the unions and cooperatives the tools to do so.
The Solution (Well, part of it)
AgUnity’s Co-op Manager is a platform that helps cooperatives and unions manage their members’ data and operations more efficiently and effectively.
From the outside it may look like a simple management tool, but it combines the agriculture value chain needs with intuitive design and clear guidance to deliver a tool that is tailored to users of varying degrees of tech literacy.
It is used in combination with a mobile app, called Field App, which allows for field agents to collect data in remote locations through offline capabilities. That data is then synced once they have internet connection and the data in the Co-op Manager is updated.
I was fortunate enough to do a field visit in Bali, Indonesia.
SOME WAYS GOOD DESIGN HELPED OUR USERS
STANDARDIZED DATA MANAGEMENT FLOWS
The data management user experience was standardized across members, staff and organizations to ensure an usable and consistent experience for faster user adoption.
By addressing the main framework in the initial implementation (members), delivering the functionality for staff and organizations was very quick for our developer team due to the reusable flows and components.
EXPLICIT ACTIONS AND FEEDBACK
The user flows consistently included explicit actions, such as clicking on a button to apply filters rather than applying the filters as they as selected, as ways to give them a sense of completion and reduce confusion.
Other considerations, such as highlighting which columns are being filtered on, and toast messages after important actions, were also incorporated for more clarity.
CLEAR SELF-GUIDANCE in local language
At every step of the way the platform aims to inform the user of the action they are doing, as well as empty states with instructions, in language that is simple and to-the-point. Serving as a learning mechanism for our users with low tech literacy to become more confident as they use the tool and minimize mistakes.
The Co-op Manager also has a multi-language support. Which allows for AgUnity to work in collaboration with unions and cooperatives in multiple countries.
Results
- The first clients were onboarded to AgUnity’s Co-op Manager platform by Q4 of 2023
- Jump from less than 2k to more than 150k farmer profiles, from 189 cooperatives, that are now cleansed and being managed digitally, as of December 2024
- Helped Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, the major coffee union in Ethiopia, cleanse and organize their data and prepare for audits regarding compliance with the new EUDR deforestation regulations
- Happy client: testimonial video on Youtube
- AgUnity became a Certified B Corporation in 2024
Credits
Product design: Aline Galvão Rocha
Product owner & manager: Jean-François Chénier
UI design support: Rachelle Elias Saade
Development: Stefan Barret, Ej Angelo Ibo Dalman, Jayvee Cruz, Joshua Dela Cruz, Jonald Parong
QA: Denis Brandão