I worked with Nufarm and Bravo! digital studio to create a new suite of online tools to help farmers grow healthy crops. This particular tool is a weed management system for wild radish.

When herbicides are used on weeds, they can become resistant to that herbicide. Since crops are now largely controlled by herbicides, it has become more important than ever to monitor the level of resistance in the weeds. Weeds can actually become resistent to herbicides and become 'super weeds'. These weeds can take over, making farm land completely unusable. Nufarm has been mapping the development of weed resistance for 14 years. Through genetic profiling of these populations Nufarm has identified specific herbicide resistance stages.

In the past Nufarm had to send an expert out to the farm that was experiencing weed issues, collect some seeds and bring them in for testing, before being able to give any recommendations. This could take them up to 6 months. They wanted to speed up this process and bring more power into the hands of the farmers. Now with the Weedlogic website farmers can log information about their crops and send seeds in for testing - getting solutions faster. Not only that, the history is saved in the system, allowing for better decision making and management down the track.

Once the goals were set I conducted interviews with the scientists, the farmers, and Nufarm. My goals during these interviews were to understand the users, the processes we would need to manage in the app and how people would use them. I mapped out the scientists process from collection, to testing, through to solutions. I worked tirelessly to communicate the scientists needs with the the developers. I asked the farmers questions like: Did they have trouble with wild radish? How did they manage their weed problem? I got them to talk about their farming practices and the use of technology in their farming. This was all instrumental in creating a system that was appropriate and easy for everyone to use.

Taking this information and proposed user flows I created a fully working prototype in Axure. I then conducted users testing sessions with the farmers and the scientists finding many ways to improve the flow. This process helped Nufarm understand just how important well edited and easy to read copy is for the usability of the site.

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Client:
Nufarm
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Time Frame:
3 months
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Responsibilities:
User Interface Design
User Experience Design
User Testing
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