THE PRODUCT

FlyWeb

Flyfarm Hong Kong wanted to build an internal tool 'FlyWeb' to track their automated farm systems.

WHAT I DID

Led UXUI design

Led design on a tool for automated insect protein farms in Brisbane & Hong Kong

ABOUT

FlyFarm

Flyfarm is an agri-tech company. In Brisbane, their cloud-connected mechatronics and sensor system uses IoT processors to drive the entire production line, but there is no visualisation and limited management of the data collected.

INTO THE DEEP

Research

After multiple meetings with the Hong Kong R&D team and the on-site farm team in Brisbane, to discuss the problem, current solutions, business goals and product goals, I consolidated my research findings. Some of the insights I gathered, along with How Might We tackle them

🤕 Pain Points
  1. The farms collect data from IoT sensors for temperature, humidity, feed output, protein concentration etc daily but these data points aren't used to optimise production or predict trends.
  2. Currently using multiple spreadsheets for data tracking, not visualised easily, can't see any data trends or issues before critical level errors.
  3. Difficult to manually update and manage multiple data tables, operationally time consuming and error-prone.
🤨 How Might We (HMW)  
  1. HMW predict optimised outcomes of production ?
  2. HMW visualise production process data?
  3. HMW quickly track manual data points?
🧪 Research Methods
  1. 👥 Stakeholder interviews
  2. 🧑 User personas
  3. 📐 Content architecture
  4. 🤹🏻 User testing
  5. 🧱 Prototyping
PROJECT TARGETS

Project goals

This internal tool still needs to grow along Flyfarm's growth as an agri-tech company, as an entomoprotein innovator, as a small team focused in Asia and Australia. At the end of my stint as a part of this team, the final product - FlyWeb, with the features, UX and modules it offered was a crucial asset to the team, customers and company.

🧮 Product goals
  1. Easy to use for operators to manually input data
  2. Put multiple stakeholders in secure control of production process
  3. Comprehensive data visualisation for strategy & executive team
💰 Business goals
  1. Optimise protein production
  2. Increase efficiency of operations
  3. Decrease dependence on spreadsheets
  4. Singular tool used across different teams and processes
user personas

Let's get persona-l

This tool being an internal product for Flyfarm teams in Hong Kong and Brisbane, I conducted interviews and feedback sessions with the stakeholders frequently.

''I love that our Brisbane farms collect so much data at with hundreds of tiny devices. Now I want to see & understand it from our Hong Kong headquarters"
‍
⎯ Andre
COO, Flyfarm Global
USER JOURNEY MAPPING

Mapping our web

From my findings it was clear that the extensive product would span several modules. I then put together user stories, ideas and clustered them with the stakeholders to ideate on features. Then I used the findings to create a user journey site map.This helped prioritise and ideate on features better.

design system

Weaving the web of branding

Using Flyfarm's colour as the baseline, I defined a simple design system to act as a brand guide to ensure consistency across wireframes and graphics.

Visual Design

Welcome
Teasing the UI while also reiterating the product's value prop. The welcome message is intended for a simple and quick First Time User Experience (FTUE)

Sign In Screen

Profile
‍Profile creation was simplified to capture the data needed to ensure secure access

Sign In Screen

Modules
This leads the user to various stages of the production cycle. Defining the breadth of these modules was focused on during ideation. It was important to prioritise end to end modules for the upcycling process.

Sign In Screen

Data Dashboard
‍Live updates from farm sensors for the operational team along with exportable insights for strategy planning. Critical errors get flagged and monthly reports are emailed out. Some of the charts in this case project have been modified to preserve data confidentiality.

Sign In Screen

View All
‍Every module has a table of records with functions leading them to the next module. In this Collection tab, the organic waste collected from Waste Sources like Farms, Bakeries, Breweries, Wineries etc gets processed. The user can this way process multiple batches at once.

Sign In Screen

Source Record
‍Each waste source is saved as a record. Collecting multiple data points for each record was instrumental in driving strategic decisions → which waste types or source categories had the most yield, profit % and protein concentration. Earlier each of these calculations needed large-scale spreadsheet processing and was extremely error prone.

from Geoffrey Moore's

Brand positioning statement

🏢 for Executive Team

who want to take a high level summary of the data available, the FlyWeb's data visualisation
that allows them to spot trends and plan ahead strategically unlike collected data which doesn't translate numbers with meaningful context

💻 for Project Managers

who have to process a great volume of data daily the FlyWeb is a multifarious tool that makes it easy unlike multiple files which can't handle volumes of data easily

💪 For Operators

who have limited time to manually input details, the FlyWeb is simple to learn and use that is easier to learn and use unlike spreadsheets which aren’t as intuitive or easy to update

key results

Conclusion

This internal tool still needs to grow along Flyfarm's growth as an agri-tech company, as an entomoprotein innovator, as a small team focused in Asia and Australia. At the end of my stint as a part of this team, the final product - FlyWeb, with the features, UX and modules it offered was a crucial asset to the team, customers and company.

😊 UX outcomes
  1. A more intuitive user journey reduced the need for extensive documentation and repeated training sessions.
  2. Employee-hours spent on managing multiple spreadsheets were saved and employee frustration was lessened.
  3. Intuitive conversion at each stage of the production process ensured smoother task completion.
💰 Business outcomes
  1. Decreased task times, eg: average data input time by a few seconds or minutes led to increased employee satisfaction
  2. A panoramic as well as a granular view of sensor data collected drove improved corporate strategies to predict better yield, supply chain tracking and team efficiency.
  3. Employees went from feeling handicapped by the lack of productive internal tools to better retention rates
ADIOS

So long,
fly(farm) well

During my time at FlyFarm I learnt how to collaborate with remote teams, build better products for internal use,  and even help out at the HQ soldering station a few times!

In 2020, I graduated in a devastating global pandemic and navigated a career switch from a software dev to a UIUX Designer. It got challenging, things were intense, but I'm extremely grateful I got the chance to do something I loved, and call it work.