Modernizing agriculture by providing user-friendly insights into plants’ health

Statistics

Client: Aker

Awards: European Design Award – Gold; Spin Awards – Nominee; Red Dot Design Award

Deliverables: Visual identity; Dashboard; Mobile app

The challenge

Aker provides a monitoring service for the agriculture sector that proactively identifies crop stress with the assistance of UAVs (drones). Aker believes that improving crop health leads to higher yields and at the same time creates a more sustainable world. Their mission is simple and inspirational: make every plant healthy.

CLEVER°FRANKE was asked to define and create a novel service and product around the existing algorithm in the most user-friendly manner for a rather conservative industry. We helped Aker build its brand, identity and digital product portfolio.

Value delivered

Devising a solution for end-users (growers, agronomists, co-op personnel, field scouts, crop consultants, investors) that yielded more investor interest and enabled Aker to reach its strategic goals of the year.

Case video

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During the kick-off workshop, we defined the main stakeholders through empathy mapping, detailing their journeys and user flows of the envisioned product.

The product centers around a map-driven interface. To ensure the best and most comprehensive user experience, we investigated the usability of map systems for desktop and mobile applications to see what works and what does not.

Based on Aker’s beliefs and long-term vision, we developed the name for the company and product suite. Our competitor analysis, creative positioning and strategy workshops defined their core values. These values served as the basis not only for their name, but for both the brand and identity design.

A play and amalgam on the unit of land measurement and the word for the ‘sector of agriculture’, as well as the ancient Egyptian earth deity, we chose ‘Aker’ from a list of possible names: a perfect choice.

Our identity for the brand took inspiration from the beautiful crop patterns visible when observing fields from above. It provides a striking visual style both relevant and dear to the target audience, which simultaneously references the drones that are used for crop analysis.

After mapping the numerous possible service, user and task flow within the product, we designed an interface focused around the map, which is a central element in which Aker’s intelligence truly shines.

Providing a visual and spatial means of orientation, the map allows for both navigation to farms and fields, as well as viewing the core analyses, guiding the user to where their attention is needed most.

Applying the same principles, we designed an app that allows the core functionality to be available offline, as many fields are secluded and have no cell coverage.

The maps allow the grower to orient themselves quickly and find their fields for navigation. Map, satellite and aerial images are available.

Both for the agronomers managing scouts and the scouts themselves, Aker provides a clear task overview and next steps, streamlining the process of analysis, scouting, reporting and taking action.

The web application is used in rural environments where network might not always be strong, so we built the application to be resilient. It is a universal React application built on a custom server. The core of the web application for the platform consists of React as a view library with Redux for state management. The initial page load is always executed on the server just like a traditional web application.

If the JavaScript bundle fails to load, interactive elements like buttons, forms and anchors will revert to default browser behavior. For example, submitting forms will work even if JavaScript does not, and the application will reload the page to show fresh responses from the API. We use Leaflet to produce rich, interactive maps and enhance them with custom layers showing UAV imagery provided by a REST API. To support multiple languages, we use react-intl to load and switch languages dynamically.

A successful launch before the start of the growing season, new investor interest, and meeting of strategic goals for the year.

It was a sincere pleasure working with such a talented group of people. We are delighted for their engagement, enthusiasm and quality of work with our brand and product.

Orlando Saez, Chief Executive Officer, Aker

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