FieldWatch Website Redesign
Who is FieldWatch?
FieldWatch is an agricultural non-profit that provides data registry mapping tools to crop growers and pesticide applicators with the goal of reducing spray drift in their local communities.
Redesigned the main FieldWatch Website using insights from thorough evaluative and generative research.
Role Team Time
Team Lead Anne Pivonka Aug 2021 - Dec 2021
UX Research Matthew Will
UI Design Jensen Burr
Erin Thomas
Garrett Fitzgerald
Andrew Dobler
Madhu Rajesh
Original FieldWatch Website
Context
What is Spray Drift?
Spray Drift is the carrying of pesticides to neighboring fields due to weather conditions and wind. This can have a negative impact, killing nearby crops and damaging neighbors livelihood.
An example image of spray drift and how it happens. Credit to Grains Research and Development Center
FieldWatch's Problem
FieldWatch currently experiences low engagement with their services, specifically the main website after the initial visit and users are unclear of the roles that they are supposed to play making the service ineffective.
Our Opportunity to Help
Because of this, we were given the opportunity to redesign a platform that builds community, communication, and trust between pesticide applicators and beekeepers/crop growers to ensure the protection of fields and apiaries.
Making Sense of it all
We learned that:
1. Important Information was buried within the site
2. Navigational hiccups and repeating pages caused confusion.
Site Map
Goal: Visualize and understand the complexities of the site as well as current navigation patterns and issues.
Content Audit
Goal: Visualize and understand the complexities of the site as well as current navigation patterns and issues.
Example of content organization for the home page
Discovering the Disconnect
We identified that:
1. Users were not visiting the initial FieldWatch site after the initial signup.
2. Pesticide applicators were not notifying beekeepers/crop growers before spraying pesticides.
Interviews
Goal: Learn from and empathize with both pesticide applicators and beekeepers/crop growers to understand the disconnect that causes spray drift and crop loss. We also wanted to learn about their understanding of FieldWatch's site and the role that it plays in their work.
Our team reached out to seven beekeepers and three specialty crop growers as well as over 100+ pesticides applicators.
Outcome: Participants did not visit the home FieldWatch site after their initial visit to discover their portal
Survey Results
Insight 1: Lack of Perceived Value in FieldWatch's Services
When asked, "Has your use of BeeCheck/Driftwatch helped prevent bee or crop loss?", out of 1,145 responses, 61.9% of respondents chose, "no, not that I can prove."
Insight 2: Lack of Communication between pesticide applicators and beekeepers/crop growers
One beekeeper said, "Being a new beekeeper I thought this would give me the peace of mind that my bees would be a little safer. Not a week after I registered we had a crop duster spraying all around us, you could smell the chemicals, not a single call"
How can we demonstrate the value that FieldWatch Provides?
Creating Actionable Insights
To better synthesize the needs of our stakeholders, we created 4 CUJs to identify specific use cases for users visiting the site based on research insights, as well as business goals.
Critical User Journeys (CUJs)
Gaining Knowledge and Iterating
Our team used these User Journeys as a framing for ideating and iterating moving forward.
Testing and Interating
Through testing, we recognized that implementing contact functionality within the main FieldWatch Site disrupted the current mental model of users. We had to take a different approach.
Our Solution
Here is the home page of the site. The goal of this was to actively take users through the journey of learning about their role and the company before funneling them into their respective registry site.
Community Page
Language helped to build a sense of community and joint responsibility to unite both groups in FieldWatch's Mission.
The community page gave all members the ability to see the role that beekeepers/farmers and pesticide applicators play to protect their neighbors.
Advocacy Page
The advocacy page allowed for users where FieldWatch was not activated in to advocate to the Department of Agriculture and get notified when their state is activated.
Reflection
As my second time as a team lead, I wanted to grow in leading my team through the design process and making decisions that would benefit the team, as well as the project. I learned a lot throughout this project cycle. This was my first time working on an existing platform, and not building from scratch. The structure and constraints of this project were more limited than I was used to. We had to balance many stakeholders including two very different user groups and the company itself. I traversed a lot of complexity in understanding where the true value of FieldWatch's site existed. We asked questions like, "How can we encourage engagement with the site after the initial visit?" and "How do we increase communication and bridge disconnect between two, very distant user groups?". I grew a lot as a researcher, visual designer, and person throughout this project. I worked to increase my collaborative leadership skills as well as communication skills when working with my team and talking with stakeholders about design decisions. I also focused on learning from failure throughout this project. There were a lot of times where the project shifted and I had to quickly adapt as a team lead. In the future, I hope that I am able to continue to learn and grow in these skills and more.
