SMART PADDOCK

UX DESIGN

 CLIENT

Smart Paddock is an Australian-based company developing smart ear tags for the livestock industry that provide near real-time information to producers about the health status, behavior, and accurate geo-location of all the animals in their herd by utilising IoT data straight from the paddock.

To gather the data, Smart Paddock has created the Bluebell tag which attaches securely onto the ear of each animal and monitors the temperature, mobility, and geo-location, which the producer can easily access from a web dashboard or mobile phone application.

The Bluebell tag is an ear tag that is attached using standard tag implementation tools through the ear of the animal. The tag data is sent via a local wireless gateway module that is installed in the vicinity of the herd. Normally only one or two gateways are required per farm depending on the number of animals tracked and the size and location of the paddocks.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES

1. Research on cattle farmers issues/pain points in relation to managing livestock.

2. Which are the problems worth solving with technology?

3. Concepts for a modern and simple design for the Smart Paddock dashboard.

SECONDARY OBJECTIVES

1. Research on what device would be most used (tablet, smartphone, 
desktop/laptop) and;

2. when they would use such devices.

3. Information on what software farmers use to manage their farms.

RESEARCH

SURVEYS

1. An email inviting members of Angus Australia to participate in a short survey and an option to opt in for further research.

2. A seperate survey was also sent to Smart Paddock customer database inviting them to participate.

Results:

20 responses from Angus Australia members list

12 responses from Smart Paddock customer database

ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEWS

1. Cold calling past contacts as well as members of Angus Australia to conduct one-on-one interviews over the phone.

2. Calls were also made to customers listed within the Smart Paddock customers database.

Results:

10 one-on-one interviews conducted in total (telephone).

3 of these were from the Smart Paddock database.

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Competitor analysis was also undertaken with desktop research used to discover what other similar products were doing in the market and what their dashboards looked like.

KEY INSIGHTS

• Main age groups of farmers were between 25-34 and 45-54 years old

• Majority of responses were from NSW and QLD

• Farmers number 1 concern is pasture management

• Secondary concerns are early illness detection, drought and pasture/crop

growth

• Farmers commonly check on their herd first thing in the morning as routine

and sometimes multiple times per day

• Desktop/laptop was preferred by 48% of farmers, smartphones were

preferred by 41%

• There is a mix of software used by farmers with Agriweb and Gallagher TSI

slightly more popular

AFFINITY MAPPING

JOURNEY MAPPING

After synthesising the data and insights from our research we created the personas of John and Shelley. Using empathy maps to build a strong understanding of their pain points, and identify opportunities to make their working lives better. I also drew up user journeys of each persona’s typical day to help ideate solutions to their pain points.

PERSONAS & USER JOURNEYS

REFINING THE PROBLEM STATEMENT

MVP

Dashboard features:

1. Alerts/notifications

2. Calving alerts

3. Early illness detection

4. Escaped cattle/stolen tags

5. Pasture/water data

IDEATION

IMPLEMENTATION

The implementation of the Smart Paddock dashboard involved wireframes, user flows, lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes with three rounds of usability testing conducted throughout the process using eight different people.

HI-FI PROTOTYPE

Dashboard features:

1. Alerts/notifications

2. Calving alerts

3. Early illness detection

4. Escaped cattle/stolen tags

5. Pasture/water data

NEXT STEPS

• Real-time updates are vital for farmers.

• Recommended the implementation of our new designs on Smart Paddocks current dashboard.

• Continue to work on the Bluebell, so it can track and monitor the extra features in Smart Paddock’s future plans; pasture management, water management, heart rate and activity tracking.

• Further testing of dashboard usability and app design with more farmers for continued iteration of the product.

• Add the alert feature and notes option so that farmers can discuss and log important information that occurs daily on the farm.

• 12-24 hour reporting summarising herds daily activity will to help farmers plan and manage.