Intro
Duration
Skills
User research
Market research
User testing
Interface design
One week
AGvisorPRO is a mobile application at the forefront of agricultural innovation. Connecting farmers with industry experts in the agricultural industry, AGvisorPRO gives its users the resources they need to tackle difficult challenges, gain new knowledge, and be successful in an industry that is evolving at an accelerated pace in the digital age. On the AGvisorPRO application, farmers can ask questions and receive responses from industry experts in the agricultural field through a service called “Ask The Network”. The network of experts consist of users from a wide range of agricultural industries - from mechanical engineers, to cattle farmers, and everything in between.
We assembled a group consisting of three Product Designers, a Full Stack Engineer, a Product Manager, and the CTO. We explored solutions for monetizing the platform for both the business and its industry expert users in the form of a one week Sprint. During this time we conducted market research, user interviews, and usability testing.
Goal
Clearly communicate value in the platform, incentivizing our users and generating revenue for both industry experts and the business.
Approach
Map user flows to capture key moments in the product experience.
Establish our “How Might We” statements to focus on the biggest problems.
Research and synthesis findings from products, services and experiences that inspire solutions.
Explore solutions through sketching and storyboarding.
Prototype and test solutions in user interviews.
The challenge
As we were continuing to build up our user base, alienating new and existing users through the introduction of monetization was our greatest concern. We asked ourselves two questions that served as guiding principles when making decisions during the design sprint.
Will we create a payment wall in this process, ultimately limiting our ability to learn?
Can we maintain sustainable traffic through the platform with the introduction of monetization?
Map and target
To narrow the scope of our sprint, we interviewed experts within the company and external stakeholders. During the interviews we captured interesting details and key points which we then turned into How Might We statements.
We categorized the How Might We statements into groups and prioritized their importance through a voting system - this gave us clear considerations and a guideline to our goal.
We narrowed our scope to a concept we called “Closing the Loop”.
For Experts, this meant being able to clearly communicate and charge farmers for the cost of their services - in addition to receiving valuable feedback in the form of ratings and reviews.
For Farmers, this meant having full transparency for what expertise they would be receiving and how much it would cost them - in addition to getting a clear resolution to their question and the opportunity to provide feedback for the service they received from the Expert.
User flows
Having established our goals for each user type we then focused on identifying the current frustrations of our users in the existing product experience.
The user flow showed where speed bumps would deter our users from reaching the goals we set out for in the Sprint. To alleviate the frustration and allow for the introduction of monetization, it was important to solve these challenges before any final solution could be implemented to the live application.
We identified key moments to the user experience that had yet to be solved.
User submits a question and never receives a response.
The question is resolved and the conversation ends
The key moments needed to re-engage the user and provide closure that satisfied their expectations and communicated value.
Competitive analysis and market research
With our target areas mapped, we began exploring effective and innovative solutions from other industries and products that could be incorporated or inspire solutions for the challenge we faced.
We looked at examples that we felt effectively communicated value, provided closure, and were transparent in their offerings. We found product and service marketplaces shared the most similarities with what we wanted to achieve - some of the products we looked at included Facebook Marketplace, Fiverr, and Maple.
Facebook Marketplace
Fiverr
Maple
Sketching and decision making
With an understanding of the challenge, and research to back the next stage of our design process, we focused our attention internally to possible solutions from each member of the Sprint.
We sketched our ideas, voted, and placed the final decision on our “Decider” - the CTO, who had the technical, market, business, and product expertise to guide our decision making process.
To accompany the solution we wanted to test, we formed the following hypothesis:
By demonstrating a finish line for both experts and farmers, we can promote a value exchange and future re-engagement.
The solution
The solution for testing incorporated pieces from two ideas, with the goal of providing a resolution for both Farmers and Experts while encouraging further engagement on the application. This was to be tested with the following feature additions:
Give Experts the ability to charge an agreed upon price for their time and knowledge.
Confirm with both users that the question has been resolved.
Prompt Farmers with end of conversation actions such as rating, reviewing, and support when a question has been marked as resolved.
Prompt Experts with end of conversation actions such as rating, reviewing, and support when a question has been marked as resolved.
Create a dashboard that keeps a record of all transactions a user has taken part in.
Storyboarding
Equipped with a hypothesis and solution we could test, we started planning how we would present this to our users by storyboarding with the following prompt:
“What should we test with our users to validate our hypothesis?”
Through the power of voting, we prioritized one storyboard to apply to our design solution - we then applied the storyboard to the existing user flow and screens within our application to ensure that the integration would be seamless to our users during testing. This would give us the best feedback and data to iterate off of when analyzing the results of our user interviews.
Prototyping and testing
With an outline of what we wanted to test, we moved onto designing our prototype. We integrated our billing solution into the existing user flow for both Farmers and Experts so we could evaluate and record the impact to both user groups effectively within a realistic scenario.
Insights and final screens
“I’d prefer setting a price from the beginning, even if it turns a couple people off instead of surprising people with a bill at the end.”
For the Experts it proved to be a familiar method for our expert users, as it translated seamlessly with how they were conducting business off the platform. They were happy that it served as an extension to the work they were doing and were optimistic about the opportunity of creating more revenue for themselves.
Our solution was not perfect however, and left too many variables on the table for Experts to feel confident that they would be getting paid what they were worth for their time.
“Once I’ve explained my problem to the Expert, I think it’s appropriate to start charging after that point. I like knowing what it’s going to cost up front.”
From our Farmer users we received similar feedback which was encouraging as it gave us a point of focus for future iterations. They were happy to pay for the services the Experts were providing, as long as it was transparent and clearly communicated at the beginning of the conversation.
They gave valuable feedback into their expected outcomes, and where they felt value was effectively or ineffectively communicated.
Much of what was tested left the decision making process in the hands of the Expert and Farmer - both user groups expressed an interest in a more standardized process that could be carried out by the platform.
In conclusion
Although our scope expanded slightly during the course of the week, the insights we gained through testing our solutions in user interviews gave us valuable information for future iterations of monetization solutions. We established that our Farmer users were happy and willing to pay for services, and that our Experts saw value in expanding their services to our platform. We made significant progress towards our goal of communicating value in the platform, incentivizing our users and generating revenue for both industry experts and the business.
Looking ahead
Additional monetization solutions would need to be tested with our users based on the feedback we received. Models such as freemium, subscriptions, and flat rates would need to be looked at and tested in greater detail to make an informed data-backed decision on the direction of monetization for the AGvisorPRO mobile application.
Expert flow
Farmer flow