Ricult
Designing AgriTech Apps to Drive Crop Production
Ricult aims to empower greater crop production by connecting farmers, mills and experts in Thailand, Pakistan and Vietnam through web and mobile applications powered by satellite data.
Overview
Occupying a niche market between AgriTech and fintech, Ricult is not only a digital financial solution for smallholder farmers, but also aims to maximize yield and operations through farm analytics.
Ricult’s satellite technology digitalizes several processes for monitoring farms, fields and crop health, and can even track the different stages of crop planting and project the next stages in farming. However, Ricult still needed a platform to support their vision of a symbiotic AgriTech ecosystem that could connect and support mills and farmers in Thailand, Pakistan and Vietnam to improve and increase crop production.
Solution
After our discovery process, we worked closely with Ricult’s product team and their outsourced team of developers to build platforms to support their ecosystem of mills, satellite crop data, agronomic experts, and farmers. We designed and developed a desktop web application for high-level reviewing for supervisors. We also created a multi-function mobile application for agents to be able to monitor crop data and support farmers in crop cultivation and production.
2 apps for a growing AgriTech ecosystem
We developed applications to support and benefit farmers, mills, and Ricult’s AgriTech services.
A large-scale web app to monitor farms
We designed a desktop overview to monitor farmers, leads and harvests.
Accessibility for local farmers
Each feature is available in Urdu, Thai, Vietnamese, and English.
Every member of the project team demonstrated professionalism, genuine enthusiasm, and a deep commitment to achieving results that matched our internal team's dedication. We are absolutely delighted with the final outcome and would choose Morphosis again in the future.
Renier Bueno, Ricult
Global Head of Product Management
Our process
To best determine what kind of digital product would make Ricult’s idea a reality, Morphosis started with workshops for UX design thinking and discovery. We carried out UX research into particular pain points for farmers, agents, and mill supervisors who would use and benefit from the applications.
As a result, we found that the best solution was to develop a mobile app for agents to monitor each farmer’s case and crops, as well as a desktop application for supervisors to track issues at a higher level. We outlined these findings in a value proposition to the client, and then began building sitemaps for both the web and mobile apps.
What made this project particularly unique was that the design and development was a result of collaboration between our UX/UI designers, Ricult’s product team, and their outsourced app developers. Together, we helped guide and shape the design of user journeys through the desktop and mobile apps. Through an iterative design process, we built the interface based on the features and details Ricult specified, based on the developers practical capabilities. Once we completed site mapping and wireframes, we performed local user testing to validate UX design and flows before the project was finalized.
Challenges we overcame
1. Connecting an AgriTech ecosystem
Over 30% of Thailand’s labor force works in the agricultural sector, and many farmers struggle to find the resources for crop cultivation. To answer this need, the desktop application and the agent application form a digital platform connecting farmers, mills, agents, supervisors, and agricultural experts.
Furthermore, Morphosis designed features and user flows to leverage data on crops, weather projections, and other risks. This allowed agents to monitor and advise farmers in the network whenever a problem arises.
2. Supporting farmers with crop data monitoring
During our discovery and UX design thinking workshops, we discovered that the best way to support the farmers in Ricult’s network was to design an application for agents. By using the mobile application, agents can on-board new farmers into the system, manage and contact each case based on their individual reports, and track each step from seed to harvest.
When designing the mobile app, we compiled easily-accessible reports in user-friendly flows, while integrating complex satellite data. Users of the mobile application have access to weather forecasts, harvest projections, crop cycles, risks, and much more. The mobile application also allows users to manage and contact farmers, and to track each step to measure each farmer’s success in crop cultivation.
3.Designing financial inclusivity for farmers
Ricult had plans to enable banking and fintech solutions in their platforms to help farmers finance their fields and to increase financial inclusivity in the agricultural sector.
Morphosis designed additional app features to connect to platforms and bank processes, including customer KYC and optimized user flows. We then handed the UX designs and wireframes over to Ricult to use in the future, once they receive approvals from banks and regulators.