A human centred design analysis of Agtech co-development : the case of FarmIQ : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Agribusiness at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

Abstract

Over the past decade, the promise of agtech has far exceeded the reality of what has been delivered in benefits to farmers. This is often due to the technology’s poor customer and user experience design. Faced with similar market failures with respect to product and service adoption, the business sector has developed an approach called human centred design as a tool to understand their customers’ problems and design better customer experiences. To date, however, the use of human centred design to address similar market failures within the agtech sector has been limited. To evaluate this gap, this thesis undertook a case study analysis of a New Zealand agtech company, FarmIQ, who had developed farm management software with public money. Human centred design was used as the method in this research. Farmers and FarmIQ staff participated in this action research over a 17-month period to help FarmIQ with their challenge to gain sustained farmer adoption. During this time, interviews and workshops were conducted with current and potential farmer clients. The human centred design process revealed that even though FarmIQ had engaged extensive farmer input and developed sophisticated, world-class software, the subsequent adoption of their product was confined to a very small segment of the market. The farmer input had generated ideas and concepts which were somewhat more sophisticated than what the average farmer was willing to pay for and use. Using a series of iterative processes, farmers, researchers, FarmIQ staff and rural professionals participated in synthesis and testing to identify and validate the farmers’ critical jobs-to-be-done that could be solved with technology. These findings were further developed and tested to reveal a minimum viable product and strategic options that would allow FarmIQ to confidently and better reposition and align their offerings with a majority segment of the farming population. The participatory nature of human centred design increased the capability of FarmIQ staff in co-design practices, enabling them to understand the benefits and challenges of a customer-centric approach and providing them with tools to better align products and services with the company’s strategic aims.