Simply Soils
May - Aug 2022
Project Overview
A survey-style app for students and professionals in the soil industry
Role
Product Design Intern at Imagine Contracting Inc.
Team
Nacim Khelifi (Lead Developer), Aleena (Manager/ Stakeholder)
Duration
4 months
Problem
This app strives to solve several issues experienced by people in this industry. This project is a redesign. The original one was never launched since the app was made with a default android studio layout and was not up-to-par with a modern app UI/ usability.
Disorganization
Using multiple tools: for GPS tracking and another for collecting data and yet another for sending a report lead to disorganization.
Inefficiency
Manually categorizing and identifying the different types of soil structures/ textures can be time-consuming and hard for someone who does not have substantial experience in the field.
Discoverability
Going back and forth between sections was not seamless and the app was hard to navigate since there wasn't a designer involved.
Goals
Optimize navigation experience
The app should be easy to navigate since there's a lot of pages involved, this can be done using proper information architechture
Increase user-retention rate
Since there are many pages, we want users to finish completing surveys
Provide consistent visual identity
The app should have a simple and cohesive look matching the tone of the brand instead of the default android studio layout currently in use.
Eliminate clutter and improve discoverability
The unused sites should be easy to find but should not hinder the current experience. The app should make our end goal easy keeping the older target demographic in mind.
Solution
Eliminate Inefficiency ✅
Collect soil data with efficiency
Visuals paired with text, completing surveys becomes faster and easier.
Increases retention rate and reduces frustration.
Increasing user-retention rate ✅
Stay motivated to finish surveys with minimal scrolling
Instead of having a top to bottom hierarchy for options, they are arranged in a horizontal scale in an increasing order.
Better screen space management since it maximizes the content you see instead of having to scroll a lot.
Positive reinforcement at every step to increase motivation to complete the survey.
Organization + Discoverability ✅
Find all your sites in one place
Only see what's important and archive the rest
Send emails from the home site, no going back and forth between multiple tools
Single tool for all your needs ✅
No more back and forth for mental calculations
We'll calculate the texture for you based on your soil characteristics in app
Design Process
Establishing Process
I organized a system to help our team communicate before we started
Kanban seemed like a good framework since it was not too restricting yet provided accountability to keep us on track.
I used Notion since we could add pages depending on the stage of the project and it also provided powerful integrations like Slack.
I wanted to learn through competitor analysis but couldn't find any so I thought that something other than an app might be used for this task currently.
User Research
So, I decided to ask 11 soil scientists and analysts what tools they used
User Interviews
This gave me the "what" but I still needed to learn the why's and the how's
Task Walkthrough
I drew these while the interviewees walked me through the process of collecting soil samples from start to finish
I wanted to mimic the app based on the whole process on-site and off-site
While this increased the scope from a simple text-based survey that the stakeholder initially had in mind to a more cohesive experience, it supported eliminating multiple tools which was an initial pain point
Step 1. Collecting customer details
Step 2. Collecting soil characteristics
Layout of a pit and a site
Final step. Emailing the site reports to the customer
Research Synthesis
Quotes from the user interviews supported existing problem areas and uncovered some new ones.
A lot of these could be drawn back to the initial problem of disorganization
This process also involved very human-intensive activities leading to human errors and inefficiency.
Inefficiency and Human Error begging for optimized systems
"I wish the process of compiling the data and sending email reports was faster and easier"
"Sometimes I forget to note down specific soil characteristics...like grain or structure...It's easy to miss (with so many details)"
Steep Learning Curve
"Our tools require lots of initial training and expertise, so onboarding of trainees is quite intensive"
Lack of GPS due to internet access
" It is hard to use (google) maps because there is sometimes no internet access in the remote locations our customer sites are on."
User Flow
To optimize the user experience, I made this user flow based on the task walkthrough, and success metrics (like completion time and number of clicks)
Ideation
I sketched low fidelity wireframes to settle on the app visual structure and share my work with the developer and stakeholder early on.
For the homepage, I took inspiration from the google calendar interface--although it's a wildly different app, both products had the need to create new (pits/events) and the boxed structure provided a minimalist and organized look.
A couple of things to note:
We ended up merging the user profile and settings page after user testing since 62% of users did not see the use of creating a user profile.
The stakeholder wanted for user to have the option of changing the order of questions for the survey, but it was not possible with a short deadline from a development perspective so we ended up having the option to skip to a specific section using the progress bar.
Validating Design Decisions
This is the MVP that the android developer came up with which we were able to test with 5 users
Refinement
After testing we added a custom inclusion section to manually enter in fields where one could not find the exact option
Also added a completed tick mark sign in addition to the progress bars to have an even clearer indication of states.
Reflections + Takeaways
Overall this was a great learning experience!
It was really challenging to be the only designer, but it also gave me the chance to be a self-starter and set up systems in place to improve my efficiency and workflow.
I worked 2 full-time jobs this summer and it did get tiring sometimes but I am so grateful for this opportunity since I did not have real experience as a designer prior to this.
Don't be afraid to start over
If you notice a flaw in your thought process, it's okay to start over. It does get easier and faster the more you do it.
Don't take it personally
It was my first time getting lots of criticism, by the end I realized that an attack on my work is not an attack on me. Do what's best for the user.
I learnt how to find the most feasible solution together
Developers and stakeholders are friends. There was a point where there was a certain feature requested by the stakeholder but was unfeasible from the development perspective. I tried to find the best solution that satisfies both-- an easier workaround.
The android version of the app is set to launch in 2023!
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