Understanding the challenges farmers have with their financial software
+ improving this service
Problem
👩🌾 Farmers are great at farming, but they also need to sell their goods. The system they are using for that is complex and outdated. The company needed to understand way of thinking and working from farmers.
Solution
🧐 Using fieldstudies, contextual inquirements and qualitative interviews I interviewed over a dozen farmers in Skåne. Resulting in clear insights and wireframes of a new financial service.
Impact
🤩 The new financial service simplified the sales process, allowing farmers to focus more on farming. With better financial control and trust in tailored tech solutions, they increased productivity and profitability, boosting the local agricultural economy.
How to sell your grain 🌾
Talking finances is a tricky subject. Talking in dept finances with farmers is even more tricker. This research project showed me that farmers are passionate about one thing: farming. Not dealing with exchange rates, bills and contact with the bank. But by creating trust in the conversations they were opening up a lot, allowing us to have full insight into their finances.
Field studies
We conducted field studies to observe farmers in their natural work environment, understanding their everyday routines. This gave us authentic insights into their challenges and the complexity of their current systems.
Contextual inquiries
By conducting contextual inquiries, we engaged with farmers as they used their existing tools. This allowed us to identify pain points and understand their decision-making processes in real time.
Qualitative user interviews
Through in-depth qualitative interviews, we explored farmers' needs, goals, and frustrations in greater detail. These conversations helped us design a solution tailored to their specific financial and operational needs.
Usability studies
A usability study was conducted to test the new financial service with real users. It ensured that the design was intuitive, refining features based on direct feedback to improve functionality and user experience
Learnings
This project is where I learned my Swedish. Interviewing farmers in Skåne was harder then any other interview I have ever conducted. Presenting my insights in Swedish was harder than just presenting insights. At that moment I struggled a lot, but now: this client challenged me, accepted my OKish Swedish, and helped me improve my swedish to a proffesional level.
Highlight
On a personal note I really enjoyed conducting this research on the other side of the country. We planned 'the big farmer roadtrip' for weeks, and while we were on the road we kept the team in Stockholm daily up to date with insights, photos and snippets of videos we took.