Drought Resilience: Helping farmers assess and improve their resilience

Blue Flower
Blue Flower
Blue Flower
Blue Flower

Type

New user product / tool

client

Department of Agriculture

role

UX Designer

year

2022

Project Overview

A tool to inform and build resilience for farmers in Australia was needed to help those falling behind identify future potential risks and assess their current situation (not only environmentally, but from a financial and personal/social perspective).

www.drsat.com.au

Project Outcome

We created a free tool, the Drought Resilience Self-Assessment Tool (DR. SAT), which enables farmers to assess their resilience against climate change including drought and other climate risks. Resilience assessments include financial, personal & social, and environmental indicators. Based on farmers’ individual assessments, the tool provides tailored options and resources to support farmers to build resilience. The tool also contains regularly updated satellite imagery, remote sensed data and climate projections for your farm to help inform resilience assessments and supports decision making on physical climate change risks.

My Role

I was responsible for a range of activities across the full scope of the project, including;

  • Conducting a range of research activities and compiling a thorough user needs assessment report to outline key users and their needs

  • Defining what features should be included in the tool

  • Wireframing and prototyping designs

  • Creating an unmoderated user test in Maze using a Figma prototype

  • Facilitating 1:1 sessions with farmer to test sections of the tool as it was being built to ensure that it was meeting user’s needs

  • Working collaboratively with developers to modify designs and prioritise features for staggered releases.

Overall design process

Research and frequent testing with our end users was vital in shaping the tool and ensuring we created a product that really met their needs.

  1. Understand who we were designing for
    A number of 1:1 interviews with farmers and representatives were conducted, as well as surveys to understand our potential users. I produced a detailed user needs assessment report to uncover who we were designing for.

  2. Define features in the DR. SAT and validate
    After understanding who our users were, and working collaboratively with another designer, I started putting together designs of what features in this tool might look like. These early wireframe designs were validated through a design survey using Maze – an online unmoderated testing tool.

  3. Test designs throughout MVP build
    After validating designs with farmers, we began development. Throughout the build of the first release I tested features iteratively as they were built with 2-3 farmers per week (for just over 2 months.)
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  4. Continue to validate designs for future phases with users
    I continue to design new features to the tool for future releases, conducting 1:1 interviews with farmers to ensure that the designs meet their needs.