Krishi Kissan App Redesign
Krishi Kissan is a Mobile app developed to help farmers by providing farming-related information like weather and availability of seeds quickly. Through this app, they can get the information on demonstration in the nearest area and Seed Minikit distribution in their area.
Redesigning the Krishi Kissan App was a group project I took up as a part of a college assignment. The existing design of the application had some major flaws in the design system and information architecture. Hence it made sense to redesign the user experience and interface of this application as there was plenty of scope to improve some aspects of the app at a very basic level.
The Team: Sarvottam Kulkarni, Snehal Pophale, Sukhada Yogi, Atharva Sakharkar.
The Brief
We had the freedom to choose any app of our choice and redesign its user experience after identifying the pain points in the current design.
As a group collectively we took the decision of not going for a mainstream application like BookMyShow or WhatsApp as these applications already have great Product/UI UX design teams behind them. To redesign something like that at our level would be a futile exercise. Hence, we went for the Krishi Kissan App which had a lot of aspects that could be improved.
My Role
Before going further with the project I would like to define the role I played in this project. My responsibilities were as follows:
- Qualitative Research
- Testing the existing App
- Information Architecture & User flow
- Low fidelity and High fidelity Wireframes
User Study
In our attempt to successfully redesign the Krishi Kisan Mobile App, originally created to help farmers streamline the process of farming, we tried to find out various problems in the existing app.
To understand the problems that existed in the app, we tested the current app and studied the same on various parameters.
The following were the parameters we used to study the existing Krishi Kisan Mobile App:
- Purpose of the App
- Features of the App
- User Feedback
- Accessibility
Taking one step further, we also studied each app in detail in terms of its visuals. Each app was used, tested and tallied against the following parameters in terms of its Visual Design:
- Typography
- Colour Scheme
- Icons
- Layout
- Information Chunking
The Purpose of the App
This mobile app was developed to help farmers by providing relevant information to them quickly. With the click of a button, they can get the information on demonstrations in the nearest area and Seed Mini-kit distribution in their area.
App Features
- Cluster demonstrations by state government.
- Front Line Demonstrations (FLDs)conducted by ICAR Institutions on rice, wheat, pulses, coarse-cereals and Nutri cereals.
- Mini kit-demonstrations on farmers field.
- Seed production by seed hub centres of pulses and nutria-cereals.
Accessibility
- The application is accessible to anyone who owns a smartphone. It can be downloaded via the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.
- Internet connection is required to download the app but the app contents can be accessed even without internet.
- The application is only accessible in the English language.
App Feedback
Here were some of the not so nice reviews we came across in the google playstore review section.
Visual Study
We conducted a visual study of the app based on the following parameters: Typography, Colour Scheme, Layout, Icons & Information Chunking.
Colour Scheme
The app follows a very agriculture-based green coloured colour scheme with white text. It is simple and suits the purpose.
Screen layout
The app follows a very cluttered and random layout wherein the options of Crop Demonstration, Mini kit distribution, seed hub and dashboard are on the opening screen and they all lead to different screens with most of them if not all of them being not functional.
In the crop demonstration section, one can only check upcoming crop demonstrations that too if he is lucky otherwise the app just crashes back to the main screen.
In the mini kit distribution option the users are only told how many total mini kits are distributed. That’s all there is no option to apply for a mini kit.
Dashboard takes to a login screen where each time you log in you have to provide an OTP regardless.
Information Chunking
The information chunking has been done as per categories but however, the information which is chunked is irrelevant and is of little to no use to the farmers.
User Personas
We took user interviews of Farmers from various age groups so we can understand the pain points and needs of farmers of almost all age groups.
Major Pain Points
- Unpredictable weather conditions.
- Lack of information about modern farming techniques.
- Adulterated Seeds
- Lack of appropriate information on remedies of recent crop diseases.
User Flow
Existing User Flow
- The existing user flow starts from a dashboard screen which is divided into different sections of the map.
- The user flow also lacks several information and form fields while completing the ‘Book an Expert’ and ‘Mini Kit’ ordering process.
- The App has a very randomised login process wherein the app prompts you to log in repeatedly at random intervals.
New and improved User Flow
- We added onboarding screens to give new users information about the different features of the app.
- We even added a simplified login process which requires data like first name, Middle name, Last name, Birthdate and Mother’s maiden name to log in, Instead of the traditional password approach were most times the password is forgotten and to reset it can be a tedious task. We chose these details because these details are very easy to recollect(Keeping in my mind that all our users are farmers of varying age groups).
- We added a proper form structure to complete all the tasks in the app.
Information Architecture
Low Fidelity Wireframes
After identifying various pain points and creating an improved information architecture it was finally time to sketch some wireframes following are some of the low fidelity wireframes we created.
High Fidelity Wireframes
We digitalized some of our low fidelity wireframes into high fidelity wireframes to get a taste of the final UI elements and the functionality of the application.
Final Designs
Following are some of the final design screens which were created to solve various pain points in the existing application.
Onboarding Screens
We made the addition of onboarding screens to the existing app to help new users get to know about the context and the features of the app.
Login and Sign Up
We have simplified the Sign In and Sign Up process for our users(farmers) by using ‘Birthdate’ and ‘Mother’s Maiden Name’ as the login details. The reason for this was that a major part of our audience was over the age of 50 years ranging even up to 80 years.
So, in this case, the traditional password approach can be very confusing. Hence we have used birthdate and mother’s Maiden Name as two of the required details as they tend to be unique and easy to remember.
Weather Alerts
We added the feature of weather alerts as it was one of the most common struggles of the farmers we interviewed.
Before global warming farmers could accurately predict the environment by just having a look at the clouds. But due to the increase in global warming in recent times, the weather conditions have become very unpredictable for the farmers.
Seed Hub
The existing seed hub options did not have any relevant screens and would just crash when selected. We added screens which would allow the users to purchase seeds from government seed hubs.
Prototype
Project Learnings
- Spending more time in research before jumping straight to wireframes helped us identify the pain points and areas of improvements very clearly.
- When you conduct actual field interviews you get to know the perspective and pain points of your users very clearly.
- Group projects are a great way of solving major UI UX problems as it allows you to work more in-depth on the problem and its solution.
Conclusion
This was my first application redesign project, It being a group project really made things simpler and very manageable. We were able to work in-depth because we were working in a group of 4 people. Working in a group helped us conduct on-site farmer interviews which wouldn't have been possible if it was an individual project. Since we were very new to the topic of user experience design we decided to stick with the book and follow a very structured design process. We know that there are a lot of things we could have done better in this project, please feel free to let me know your thoughts and feedback.
