USDA Innovation Challenge

Want to learn more about the process behind the USDA Innovation Challenge project? Read on.

Design Process

We interviewed a variety of farmers, from young upstarts in California interested in organic and local food, to more established farmers in Iowa for whom profit and scalability was the goal. We would have jumped at the chance to visit some farms, but given the limited time we visited our local farmers market.

After clustering common themes from the interviews, we identified challenges and targeted a group of users who stood to benefit the most while potentially being most receptive to using technology to make business decisions: small organic farmers.

Our team of designers brainstormed and sketched out ideas, which we then reviewed together. We identified the data that was needed and the data that we had access to, as well as the needs each idea addressed. I also brought the conversation back to sustainability, to focus our efforts. We did more whiteboarding to visualize and clarify our ideas.

Starting with low-fidelity wireframes, we iterated on a selection of concepts.

and converged on a single one, which we transitioned to medium fidelity.

User Testing

I ran our ideas by several farmers, gauging their reactions and finessing the concept so that it fit their workflow and addressed their needs.

Challenges

Our biggest challenges were the limited data in the datasets provided by the USDA and the short timeline. The data coverage was spotty (for example, data on crop yields was very sparse, coming in every 5 or so years) and difficult for the developers to wrangle. Many of our big ideas were not possible either because they required machine learning or building an active user base overnight, with user-generated content, from the ground up.

Also of note was that that many farmers went into farming to get away from the computer. In the context of the innovation challenge, we took this into consideration, vowing to chunk the data into as digestible and actionable a form as possible.

Learnings

We came away with a clearer understanding of the current farming landscape in the US. Our learnings fell into four categories.

1. Current farmers are aging out, resulting in a loss of knowledge. The US may soon see a lack of people growing healthy food close to home. The US is losing farms at an alarming pace, and the majority of farm subsidies go to animal feed and sugar, not healthy food for people.
2. Farmers, especially the young ones who are just starting out, cannot easily support or learn from each other, but it’s important to them to be able to share information, new approaches, and advice on how to respond to different challenges. They need to make decisions such as when to plant and harvest, what crops grow well in their area, what works with regards to soil type and weather patterns, and how to deal with adverse conditions. Farmers primarily plan their crops by spending time researching online or they get advice by talking to other farmers at farmers markets. They would like to receive information in the moment, but people are busy, and finding the right person to talk to is all about being at the right place at the right time. One way to facilitate sharing would be to combine farm journals and weather data across people and locations.
3. Sustainability, like the term ‘organic’, means different things to different people. To many farmers, sustainability means taking care of the land, growing the soil, and managing the farm in such a way that the farm is a closed system that sustains itself. To some, sustainability is about being able to feed the nation in an accountable way for many generations to come. To others, sustainability is about feeding the local community and maintaining a balanced personal lifestyle.
4. We are trying to quantify things people aren’t used to quantifying. These things usually go by gut feeling, such as gauging soil moisture. Everything is in the farmer’s head, and they make decisions based on their experience. Farmers learn from their mistakes by reviewing their farm journals. There is an opportunity to help farmers focus attention during critical times with alerts that then lead to recommended responses. We would like to add recommendations to the Farmed application in the future.

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