We develop smart technology and tools to make traditional conservation and farming practices efficient.
Problem
Feral animals cause huge economic losses to farmers across the world. In Australia, feral animals such as foxes and cats have driven many native species to extinction.
Traditional methods of trapping and baiting rely heavily on manual intervention. Setting up these controls and monitoring them every 12-18 hours in rough terrains increases cost overheads significantly.
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Feral animals keep farmers on their toes and bear heavy losses due to it.
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Feral animals are also potential carriers of other animal diseases (such as rabies and foot and mouth disease) and parasites (such as the screwworm fly).
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Degrade vegetation that provides food and shelter to indigenous species.
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Feral cats and foxes hunt and kill native birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects. It is known that this behavior threatens the survival of many endangered species.
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Sometimes endangered species are caught in the cage instead and get killed.
Disclaimer: All views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the respective company. Some design elements have been changed from the original.
The Rabbit-eared Bandicoot or Bilby needs a constant supply of carbohydrate-rich seeds and roots. Feral animals such as rabbits graze or degrade vegetation that provides food and shelter for them and other native animals. If vegetation is destroyed or eaten by feral animals, the Bilby and other native species are placed under greater pressure. Feral cats and foxes hunt and kill native birds, mammals, reptiles and insects. It is known that this behaviour threatens the survival of many threatened species.
My role: UI / UX designer and product analyst
As UI / UX designer of the project, I aimed to design the SaaS product for the needs and context of the target users. I took off by conducting a stakeholders’ interview to understand the requirements and pain points. This helped me to establish the user’s journey.
I also learned the technologies such as ML, IoT, and Image analysis to create a user-friendly environment to suit technology, stake holder’s ambitions, and users’ requirements.
Later, I synthesized the findings into a process flow. I decided on the flow of our product and designed the initial wireframe to achieve the first look and feel of the product.
The wireframes were designed and iterated several times to achieve the most optimized process flow of the product. The deliverables were high fidelity wireframe and a prototype that was tested with end-users.
Responsibility
Conceptualization, Ideation, user flows, low fidelity and high fidelity wireframe, rapid prototype & testing, user research, user journeys, Logic flow, UAT, persona, stakeholder
Team
The team included UI/UX designer(me), product owner, directors, developer and maniacal engineer.
Some insight from the users and pain points
I am awake in the night wondering whether I have got dingo or fox on my farm. It's challenging till you get awake and go out; your livestock is dead.
It's a miserable and great loss, and if they come in the pack, you can't help it.
A feral animal such as rabbits degrades vegetation, a source of food and shelter for other native animals. It's a big problem when you see the data.
We have some fox sighting and I am very frightened it will hurt the penguins. We can lose 100 of it overnight.
What are we doing to solve this problem?
We developed smart technology and tools to make traditional conservation and farming practices efficient by making different product segments catering for problems.
Selective trapping: The device can selectively deploy controls such as traps, baits and alert. This can save you time, cost, and effort. The device is made for rough terrains and weather conditions.
Image processing: Software that automates image analysis process reducing the manual labour of scanning into millions of images.
Persona
User journey
A user journey with Alfie AI saves hundreds of hours for the user to keep track of feral animals and native species and saves manual effort that can be stressful.
Exploring and Designing
The first steps were exploring the product's features, flow and connections.
Keeping the flow of the production in mind, I started to create high fidelity wireframe and parallelly discussed it with team member (decision making what user are looking for and how to articulate it in the product ) and gradually kept updating the key features of the product after continuous irritation after design meetings.
Product interface
Landing page
An interface design for Alfie AI where user can see the number of survey and data in the progress dashboard at on glance.
Image notification
User can track number of images updated with the time taken.
Train your own data
Users can add their own images to train their own data as data differs from different location and terrain, and species.
User can track their live location of traps and cages that can be monitored, and notifications will be sent according to species detected and captured.
Alfie guard and alert
Product prototype
I created the click-through prototypes after each irataion or feature development for the product.The goal of prototype was to test the flow of a design solution and gather feedback on it—from both internal and external parties—before constructing the final product was are main aim.This state of a prototype is fluid and initial prototype as we revised the design iteratively after user each user feedback.
Project learning
Talk like a human
At a glance, these tiny clusters of words or sentence seem insignificant when compared to the overall site design, content, and navigational flow. But surprisingly, those few little words can derail a sale or frustrate a user if not done right. Speaking the user’s language and guiding them throughout was true to users.
Seek out feedback early and continually
The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. Keeping the stakeholders/users in loop and testing solutions in whatever form (paper, low-fi or hi-fi) as early as possible saves an ample amount of time and re-work.