IoT Farm Ecological Interface Design

Ecological Interface Design

IoT Agriculture

With the decreasing number of workers ready and available to work on large scale farms, many farmers have been turning to internet solutions and technology to help reduce the need for manual labour. Smart farming is based on Internet of Things technology that helps farms to reduce waste and enhance productivity through sensors and automation. This project used Ecological Interface Design (EID) to support farmers cognitive activities as they conduct their planting, harvesting and planning activities. The outcome of this project is iHarvest, a laptop-based application that farmers can personalize to their farm, that gives them relevant alerts and information about growing and harvesting information. The project required collaboration with a teammate, the creation of a design system, information requirements for the interface, and mid-fidelity designs with enough detail for development.

Supporting farmers decision making using real-time information

Project Overview

Ecological Interface Design (EID) is a methodology of interface design used in complex work systems. Farms and agricultural operations today are growing in efficiency with the use of technology and due to the fact that it is often distributed, dynamic, deals with disturbances, partially or fully automated and is coupled to other systems around it, farms can be considered complex work domains.

Smart farming is based on Internet of Things technology that helps farms to reduce waste and enhance productivity through sensors and automation. There are many devices that can help to aid IoT farming including large amounts of sensor-collected data, agricultural drones, geo-fencing, smart greenhouses and predictive analytics. However, any technology implementation can face challenges, such as untrained workers, fear of new technology, a fragmented market, high investments and inappropriate coverage or connectivity. This interface bridges the gap between the technology and the farmer by diving into the decisions they need to make, to give them meaningful insights.

The Team

My partner in this project was Amanda, another Masters student. We collaborated in-person and online, in semi-weekly meetings to complete the project.

We had support from our instructors, Adam Reiner, and Klaus Christoffersen, who had industry and academic experience.

The Process

Glossary

Ecological Interface Design (EID): an approach to interface design introduced for complex work systems, where the focus of the analysis is on the work domain, rather than just the end user. The goal is to make constraints and complex relationships in the work environment evident to the user, to dedicate cognitive resources to problem solving rather than searching for the problem. It is built on two key concepts, the Abstraction Hierarchy (AH) and Skills, Rules and Knowledge (SRK) framework. For more information, click here.

Work Domain Analysis (WDA) & Abstraction Hierarchy (AH): The WDA is the first step in the Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) framework. This step provides a description of constraints that govern the purpose and function of a specific system. The artifact that comes from this analysis is the Abstraction Hierarchy, that provides a context-independent description of the domain. The top levels of the diagram consider the overall objectives of the domain, the bottom levels concentrate on the physical components and their affordances. For more information, click here.

Skills, Rules & Knowledge (SRK) Taxonomy: This taxonomy was created to aid in the performance of the Workers Competencies Analysis, the fifth step in the Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) framework. The SRK Taxonomy refers to the degree of conscious control exercised by a person over their activities. Skills refer to the subconscious, smooth execution of a practices physical action, where there is little monitoring, such as playing an instrument. Rules refer to going through the thought process of considering rules, either learned through formal training or through experience, before taking an action, such as stopping at a stop sign. Knowledge refers to completing a task in a completely conscious manner, where considerable mental effort is exerted, such as a trainee performing a task, or an experienced work working in a new situation. For more information, click here.

Information requirements (IR): Information Requirements outline key variables that operators can use to measure key elements described in the WDA. They will be used as a basis for the EID. Each Information Requirement is made of the variable, how it is measured, what the constraints are of that variable for appropriate usage and whether it is a multivariate relationship. Information Requirements are most easily built after the Abstraction Hierarchy is built, as we can use the elements from the Abstraction Hierarchy.

Research

Understand how people behave and how we can change that behaviour.

Establish Purpose

The purpose of a farm, using IoT technology is to produce optimal growth conditions for crops using smart technology to monitor environmental and farm-based variables. It is important for farmers to produce a large quantity of high quality crops in order to make a profit. This means farmers need to ensure they can mitigate the impact of environmental variables, such as hazardous weather and inadequate soil conditions. To help the farmer achieve their purpose, we conducted a Work Domain Analysis (WDA) to determine what information farm operators (farmers) need to monitor and manage their farm and meet their goals.

Research & Gathering Information

Before we dove too deep into identifying the scope, we needed to learn more about the farm domain. To do that we split up two research methods. After conducting the research, we isolated the insights separately, then came together to discuss what we had identified. This research helped to make decisions as to system boundaries, constraints, creation of the work domain space and information requirements.

If we had more time, we would have conducted further interviews with people in the agricultural industry throughout the process, getting more specific as necessary.

Domain Expert INTERVIEWS

Conducted by: Hema

I interviewed two domain experts.

A full-time farmer, who sells her crops every summer as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) with focus on connecting to the land and growing food naturally.
A software manager at an agricultural startup helps farmers reduce their pesticide usage through monitoring of plants susceptibility to disease, and then suggestion of when to spray pesticides.

RESEARCH PAPERS

Conducted by: Amanda

Amanda looked up research papers related to IoT farms and farming technology, examples below:

Determine System Boundaries

Before deciding the system boundaries of this product, we had to consider our budget and timeline. Our team was of two people and we had two months to complete the project and create hi-fidelity interface. Considering this, we determined our work system to be as seen below:

With some secondary research, we tentatively understood the farming process as above. We initially decided to work on the plant, grow and harvest steps within this process as they are the components that are most tightly coupled to each other. As the project continued we realized that the scope was too large for us to tackle and then reduced our scope to focus just on the grow and harvest aspects. As suggested by Naikar et al. [3] and Rasmussen [4], the best work system to focus on is one that is well-bounded together but are more loosely coupled with elements outside of the system. Understanding these steps is vital for profitability and performance of the farm, as it is directly related to farm output.

Assumptions

Hypothetical farm: this software is developed for a hypothetical farm informed by our resources. Our goal is to study the needs and characteristics of a typical farm such that our final solution can be configured and used by many types of farms.

Focus System Approximation: We know that there are more steps in the farm work domain, the steps we have chosen are only a part of the operations. We understand this product will be most impactful for farmers that have pre-existing tools or methods to control other parts of the process.

Stakeholders

Before we started building the WDA, we needed to identify who are we building this interface for and who else needs to be considered.

Farm operator

The person in charge of the farm operations, managing the workers and ultimately responsible for the farm output will be the user of our interface. Their main goals will be to make a profit, assure the land continues to be sustained during use and safety.

Farm Workers

The workers on the farm might be directed by the the operator based on the information that the interface provides. They would want to make sure that the interface takes into consideration reality, environmental concerns, safety concerns, technology limitations, human limitations, and machinery limitations. Their goal is to be clear on what their work for the day is, and be able to complete it without unnecessary strain or danger.

Consumable companies

Consumables refer to any product that is necessary or farm operations, that is consumed and needs to be purchased again, such as fuel, electricity, feed, fertilizer, pesticide, dirt, row cover and seeds. Their goal would be to increase profits, understand consumable trends to meet demand and maintain relationships with farms. As this product will help farmers make decisions directly related to the usage of these consumables; how and what the interface tells the farmers will impact these companies.

GROCERY STORES

Grocery stores will accept the produce from local farms. What they sell will be determined by the quality of the produce, as well as the method with which the farmer is using to grow their produce, such as organic certification. The interface might directly affect what the farmer grows, in what season and can have an effect on the harvest outcome. The grocery stores goal is to accept visually attractive, edible produce to maintain their brand to their consumers.

Define

Identify constraints of the problem space

Building an Abstraction Heirarchy

The ADS will help to identify the constraints at each level of abstraction from the high-level big picture, to the granular mechanisms of technology and plant growth. By understanding the goals and the constraints at each step, we can help the operator by giving them the information they need to solve any problems that occur at a particular level of abstraction. Once we created the ADS, we could build the Abstraction Hierarchy, a consolidated version of the ADS.

The steps that we took to create the ADS are outlined below:

The AH lays out all of the important levels of information the farmer might need to know. It helped to develop the Information Requirements, which in turn will help the farmer to make decisions on the farm, especially in uncommon situations.

Creating Information Requirements

Each Information Requirement is related to an element in the Abstraction Heirarchy. It is a variable that the farmer might be interested in knowing the value of, to make sure the farm is operating correctly. We identified:

how each variable can be measured.
if there were any constraints for the variable for viable operation.
whether each variable was dependent on other variables.

Design Considerations

After identifying the type of information that the farmer might want to see, it is important to provide context to the use before actually designing it.

We needed to answer the following questions:

Who is using the interface?

We characterized the farmer who will be physically using this interface as one who is:

responsible for a medium-to-large farm.
has multiple workers that conduct necessary farm activity.
cannot easily identify status of crops physically.

How will they use it?

This interface is meant to be displayed on a desktop or laptop as an application. The mockups will be built on a 1440×1025 viewport size, with the intention of responsive design. The farmer can use it in their office or workstation and refer to it during the day for update.

In the future, a prudent iteration would be to make this interface accessible on a tablet.

When will they use it?

The context of usage will be that the farmer will use the interface at the beginning of the day, before delegating any tasks. The interface will provide near-real-time information, predictions and alerts. The farmer will be alerted via sound when there are issues with the farm.

In the future, a prudent update would be to connect the notifications from the application to the farmers phone, so they can be alerted to changes in the farms status from anywhere.

What can they do on it?

The interface will represent the growing and harvesting aspects of the farm process and will make use of data accumulated and processed from weather stations, sensors and cameras. The data will be shown to the farmer based on different levels of abstraction, allowing the farmer to drill down to gather more information and identify issues more deeply.

Ideate

Generate possible solutions to the defined problem

Ecological Interface Flow

Using Figma, Amanda and I crafted a high-fidelity design that reflected the design system while ensuring optimal usability.

I was responsible for the overall interface flow and carefully considered the placement, hierarchy, and visual representation of different components on the dashboard, allowing users to quickly grasp the overall system and its interconnections. Amanda helped to create the low and hi-fidelity designs for different components.

To demonstrate the navigation and drill-down capabilities of the interface, I developed a wireflow that illustrated how users could access detailed information about specific farm components. This wireflow showcased a clear and intuitive user journey, enabling users to seamlessly explore various data points and make informed decisions.

Flow Diagram

LoW Fidelity DashboarD

Design & Discussions

To test layouts and UI and get buy-in on usability & learnability

Design System

Employing the atomic structure approach, I dissected the product’s UI elements into modular components at their most fundamental level. This methodology allowed me to create a library of reusable atoms, such as buttons, icons, and form fields, which formed the building blocks for constructing more complex molecules and organisms.

With a strong emphasis on design consistency, I defined clear guidelines for the visual and interaction behaviors of each component. This ensured that every element adhered to the established design language, creating a unified and harmonious user experience throughout the product.

Atoms example

Graphic Fragments example

Graphic Form example

Views example

Mid-Fidelity Dashboard

Alarm States

A large point of focus was identifying how the interface would draw the farmers attention when there was an alarm state. We identified four different alarm states that we believed would be integral for a farmer to be aware of to achieve their goals of land sustainability and farm profitability.

Crop issues

If the interface identifies issues with specific crops or plots, both colours and icons will be used to highlight the location and severity of the issue.

Farmers can click on the specific plots, and specific produce to drill down and gather more information about harvest readiness, soil health and field damage.

irrigation issues

If the interface identifies issues with specific parts of the irrigation system, both colours and icons will be used to highlight the location of the problem.

Farmers can click on the location where the irrigation alert arose from to identify more information about the entire irrigation system, crop coverage and flow.

Fence Issues

If the interface identifies issues with specific fences, colours will be used to highlight the location of the issue.

Farmers can click on the specific fence to get more information about fence qualities, such as breaking strength, relative elasticity, wind reduction and rust prevention.

Row Cover Issues

Row cover is cover laid across crops, at various levels of opacity, to protect the crops from pests and the environment. If the interface identifies issues with a row cover on a particular field, colour will be used to highlight the location of the problem.

Farmers can click on the location where the row cover alert aorse and find more information about whether the row cover is inappropriate for the crop based on the weather patterns, and whether the row cover is properly maintained.

Outcome

What did we do and what should we do next?

Next Steps

The outcome of this project was a mid-fidelity prototype of an interface that would help farmers make decisions about the growing and harvesting.

If we had further time to dedicate to this project there are two ways that we would move forward:

Get this in front of farmers, farm managers and other relevant stakeholders to get feedback on usage. We would consider this feedback for further iteration.
Consider what a paired app might look like, providing the farmer real-time notification in the field about issues that need immediate action.

Lessons Learned

Through this project there are two key lessons that I took away from it:

Patience: The EID methodology is not simple and required a lot of reading, looking through examples and testing to assure that we were following it appropriately. It was hard but ultimately I have a better understanding of the methodology and how aspects of it can be used in a more agile framework.
Defining Scope Accurately: Both my teammate and myself are very enthusiastic, so we started with a large scope and as the project progressed, we had to cut it down, unfortunately wasting a lot of work that went into it. While it is great to have enthusiasm, we should also consider reality and be comfortable with asking to reduce the scope when we realize that based on the timeline and ‘budget’ it won’t work.

Personal Accomplishments

Learning a new methodology for processing user insights, focused on levels of cognition.
Creating a design system from scratch, that could be used by a developer immediately.
Considering many different stakeholders in creation of final product.
Presenting our design as real software to our professors, which helped me feel real ownership of the process and design.