Designing a More Effective Tool for Farmers to Thrive

Nigeria’s rich and promising agricultural landscape is plagued with obstacles such as a general lack of knowledge within farmers; lack of appropriate government support and lack of infrastructure and resources to support practitioners.

ClientBABBAN GONA

Location(s) KADUNA, NIGERIA

DODO worked with Babban Gona’s product team, an organization that leverages technology to educate and empower smallholder farmers to increase their output and profitability. We collaborated with their product team to uncover ways to improve the digital tool their farmers and support staff use for the purpose of aiding their farming practices. Our process uncovered ways for Babban Gona to effectively understand their farmers and field officers’ challenges and needs better, so they could answer to those needs. We also produced actionable ways their product team could design experiences on the mobile tool to increase it’s usefulness to the farmers both in the present and in the long term.

A farmer in a remote user testing session

The foundation of our approach centered on immersing ourselves in the agricultural ecosystem, connecting directly with farmers, field officers, and supervisors who navigate these digital tools daily.

Using dairy studies and experience mapping, we captured the ways they interacted with technology throughout their work cycles, while tools like UXCam provided quantitative data to complement our qualitative observations.

Particularly striking was the discovery of how users had adapted social media platforms, especially Instagram, as informal tools to support their agricultural work; a behaviour that highlighted both resourcefulness and unmet needs in their primary digital tools.