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Jack bretherick

Product designer

Hectare Agritech

The Hecatare Trade platform facilitates grain trading among farmers, aiming to streamline the buying and selling process and create a more efficient market.

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About the role and what I did

I joined Hectare from July 2023 to July 2024, I quickly embedded myself into the team by getting involved with the ideation process and discovery phase of a feature that would become the trading part of the platform.

I was able to work closely with the head of product to create full flows and help organise these in a way that is better for developer handover. At Hectare, we worked cross-functionally and I was able to communicate with product managers every other day around briefs to get a better understanding of farmers' needs. 

As we got more feature-heavy squads were created to prioritise pieces of work better and allow a set of designers and developers to work on set areas such as growth, onboarding, Engagement and trust, with KPIs attached to these.

As a designer, I would be in charge of a team of developers and have a product manager to assist with outlining the goals, by having such a small team we were able to collaborate together quicker and get more engagement from all developers who often felt unheard.

 

Here are some bullet points of tasks and achievements

  • Continuous improvements based on user feedback and behaviour analysis.

  • Collaborated closely with two product designers, two product managers, and the VP of product. The trading feature was successfully launched in November 2023.

  • Involved in 5 major releases and oversaw 50 plus updates to the platform in the goal of improving user activation through

  • Helped introduce design tokens to the design system

  • Helped the team break away from boring table based design.

The challenges

The goal for Hectare was to increase revenue on their inventory platform. To accomplish this, they wanted to take the existing platform called Graindex (an online marketplace for grain buyers) and merge it into Hectare; In the hope that existing users using the inventory part of the platform would be interested in using a trading function that could help them further their reach to other buyers of grain.

The high-level goals were to:

  1. Simplify the process for sellers to share their crops.

  2. Empower sellers and buyers with control over their trading, modelled after a Dutch auction.

  3. Create features that enhance user engagement within the platform.

Want to know more about the process used to get there, read more below.

Research/Analysis

Although I joined after the initial research phase, I actively asked questions to understand the new industry better. Over time, I became more involved in the research phase, overseeing user interviews and engaging in user testing with farmers. Key challenges identified were:
 

  • Lack of familiarity with technology.

  • Concerns about security and trustworthiness.

  • Perceived complexity of the platform.

Usecases / Ideation

Develop a platform that allows users to trade, upload inventory, manage trades, and check stock efficiently. Key components include:
 

The key parts of the platform are. 

  1. Onboarding: Ensure the sign-up process is informative and relevant, requiring Farming Membership ID and farm address for security.
     

  2. Creating a Listing: Allow sellers to quickly create listings with accurate crop information and preferred movement dates.
     

  3. Navigating Listings: Provide sellers with the ability to view all previous and existing listings along with a quick overview of bids and market data.
     

  4. Accepting Bids: Make bid acceptance quick and informative, including price per tonne and movement dates and a clear action to accept the bid
     

  5. Education: Offer a help centre with videos and articles to facilitate self-service and transparency. This should reduce touchpoints between customer service.
     

  6. Viewing Listings: Enable buyers to filter and view relevant listings, with clear crop preferences to define what crops they see and where they are being grown.
     

  7. Sending a Bid: Allow buyers to set preferences, including movement dates and price per tonne.
     

  8. Creating a Wanted Request: Let buyers request crops, giving sellers visibility into demand.
     

  9. Viewable Data on Tonnage Sold: Provide users with data on sold tonnage and average prices. This gives them a clear idea of their profit vs costs.
     

  10. View Market Data: Help farmers make informed selling decisions with real-time market data.

Design principles

  1. Don’t Make Me Think: Create a frictionless user experience with clear and concise information.
     

  2. Safe & Helpful: Inspire confidence with secure trading processes and helpful information at key points.
     

  3. Exciting: Enhance user excitement by making the trading process impactful for their livelihood.

Feature narrative

Designing for farmers

We focused on creating user flows, designing screens, and developing new components for future iterations, ensuring thorough prototyping and testing.
 

  • Simplified Onboarding: Implemented a step-by-step guide with visual aids and simple language.
     

  • Trust-Building Features: Added badges to verified users along with allowing users to add a profile image and a bio.
     

  • Educational Resources: Developed video tutorials, a comprehensive FAQ, and 24/7 customer support, plus community workshops.
     

  • User-Friendly Design: Designed a clean interface with a clear hierarchy of content, minimal text, and straightforward navigation.

Insights & findings

Through usability testing and pilot programs, we gathered valuable insights:
 

  • Ease of Use: Farmers appreciated the simplified onboarding and user-friendly interface. Workshop attendees showed higher engagement, often selling within hours of posting a listing.
     

  • Trust Issues: Verified profiles and clear buyer information increased willingness to trade.
     

  • Need for Continuous Support: Ongoing support and educational resources were crucial for user engagement and successful trades.

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My takeaways

A very limited active user base makes it hard to determine what will be impactful, it is important to always look for feedback to gauge what is working or even better find data that backs this, but can often be hard on a platform that has seasonal usage.
 

Looking to other industries for design solutions is a must if you want to create designs that would be recognisable for farmers who don't use websites as often, the go-to resource for us was Mobbin
 

Take your time in discovering, and defining the problem, as this drastically improves the time used doing design revisions. Make sure you are collaborating across multiple teams if you can and get as much insight as you can from customer success and sales to see what users are interested in.

Watching users can often be frustrating yelling "CLICK THE BUTTON" at the screen, but try to empathize with the user and understand what they could be thinking if you can follow up with that user if you have access to their email.

The work I did on Hectare Trading focused on making the platform accessible, trustworthy, and easy to use for farmers. Through targeted research, thoughtful design, and ongoing support, we addressed the key challenges and significantly increased user engagement and activation rates.

 

The success of the platform highlights the importance of understanding and designing for the specific needs of the target audience, especially when introducing new technology to a traditionally tech-averse group.

Results

  1. Achieved a 45% listings conversion rate

  2. 10% of Self onboarded users created listings compared to 45% of manually onboarded users

  3. Over 600 active users within the first year of launch

  4. 50% drop of rate completing listing form

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