AgroScout's web app and app serves as a comprehensive platform for farmers to access real-time data on their crops, including growth patterns, soil health, and weather forecasts. This information empowers farmers to make informed decisions about irrigation, fertilization, and pest control, leading to more sustainable and profitable farming practices.
The mobile app complements the web platform by allowing farmers to monitor their fields on the go. With just a few taps on their smartphones, they can receive alerts about potential pest infestations or adverse weather conditions, enabling timely interventions to safeguard their crops. AgroScout's mobile app truly puts the power of precision agriculture in the palm of farmers' hands.
Moreover, the flight app integrates drone technology, enabling aerial surveillance of fields. Drones equipped with advanced sensors and cameras collect high-resolution imagery, which is then processed and analyzed by AgroScout's algorithms. This aerial perspective offers farmers invaluable insights into the health and vigor of their crops, enabling early detection of issues and precise pest management strategies.
About AgroScout
The Obstacles feature in the AgroScout flight app enables users to incorporate obstacles into their drone flight plans, enhancing the safety and precision of their missions. This feature offers users the flexibility to define various types of obstacles, including polygons or circles, ground or powerline obstacles. Users can also specify obstacle characteristics such as name, base height, ceiling height, and permanence status. Additionally, users can efficiently manage their obstacles by editing or deleting them as needed.
About Obstacles
As a user, it’s necessary to have the option to add obstacles to the drone flight mission on the field,
in order to provide support for the following scenarios:
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Irrigation Equipment on the Field
A Drone Pilot or Farmer wants to use a drone to map their large crop field. They need to avoid obstacles such as irrigation equipment while planning the flight.
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Powerlines
A Drone Pilot or Farmer wants to use a drone to map their large crop field. They need to avoid obstacles such as Powerlines while planning the flight, Powerlines are a constant danger for drones, and users need the option to specify these obstacles for safe flight planning.
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Tree
A Drone Pilot or Farmer needs to update the flight plan for their crop field after a storm knocked down a tree in their field. They must edit the existing tree obstacle to reflect its new location.
Problems
For this feature, our user base includes two distinct personas: farmers and drone pilots. To ensure that the feature accommodates the needs of these diverse users, we conducted user tests with prototypes for each persona type.
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Farmers
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Drone Pilots
User Personas
I used the "How Might We" questioning method in the context of a obstacles feature in the drone missions planning, this allowed me for the generation of inventive solutions while ensuring a focus on addressing the most crucial problems. By framing questions using "How Might We", it encourages creative thinking and opens up possibilities for innovative approaches to designing and improving the obstacles feature. When applied to a obstacles "How Might We" questioning prompts us to consider various aspects of its functionality, user experience, and problem-solving capabilities. For example, "How might we create a clear and intuitive user interface for selecting obstacles on the app flight screen?".
How Might We
Method
To fully grasp and evaluate the feature and its challenges, I meticulously mapped out all competitors who have a drone flight app with the obstacle feature, including options to add multiple obstacles and choose between circle or polygon shapes.
Competitors
Thorough the research I collected and explored inspirations and ideas from direct competitors, the broader ecosystem, prevailing design trends, and big apps in the market, all tailored towards enhancing the Obstacles feature. I meticulously mapped out all the corresponding flows and research using Miro.
Below, you can find screenshots from the research.
UI.UX Research
I used the method "User Journey Map" method to proactively address potential issues, enhance customer retention, and uncover vital information for making informed decisions. These visual diagrams depict various scenarios of the expected user experience when users interact with the obstacles feature.
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Delete or Edit Obstacles
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Creating New Obstacles
User Journey Map -
Scenarios
A comprehensive map of the user experience when engaging with the obstacles feature,
demonstrating each UI screen and scenario.
A key tool for aligning development and project management teams prior
to creating wireframes and visual designs of the obstacles feature.
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Create, Edit, Delete Obstacles on Flight Mission
Flow of the Screens
by Notes
Please find below the UI screens from our web app, illustrating the Obstacles feature.
These screens offer a visual representation and flows of the Obstacles feature in the Flight app.
UI Screens
In the 'Create Obstacles on Flight Mission' flow, users have the option to add obstacles to the flight mission. They can choose between marking obstacles as circles or polygons and specify whether they are ground obstacles or powerline obstacles. The user can then add these obstacles to the field, allowing the drone to safely navigate around them during crop monitoring.
Create Obstacles on Flight Mission
In the 'Edit and Delete Obstacles on Flight Mission' flow, users have the option to edit or delete obstacles from the flight mission. They can select specific obstacles for editing or deletion by tapping on them. This flexibility provides the drone pilot with comprehensive control over obstacles within the flight mission. Even if an obstacle is removed, the user can easily choose to either delete it permanently or edit its position to another location in the crop field.
Edit and Delete Obstacles on Flight Mission
My Role and Challenges
Role - Product designer
As a Product Designer I held complete design-ownership over the feature of the mobile app of the obstacles. My role encompassed the entire design process of the obstacle feature on flight missions, from ideation and brainstorming to user research, user experience, user journey mapping, user interface design, and prototyping. I took on full responsibility for ensuring that the feature met the high standards set by AgroScout, delivering a best user experience to our customers.
Challenges
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How do you make a obstacles in the mission flight without causing to much information for the user?
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How to solve the obstacles feature without causing bad experience for the planing drone flights?
Despite the challenges posed by the obstacles feature, I was able to overcome them
through the use of good UX design and thorough user research.