The mAgri Design Toolkit - User-centered Design for Mobile Agriculture

"By integrating a deep understanding of the user when designing or adapting an mAgri product, service providers can drive successful innovation in the mAgri sector and generate services that can be commercialized faster and become more widely adopted."

This mAgri Design Toolkit is a collection of instructions, tools, and stories to help develop and scale mobile agriculture (mAgri) products by applying a user-centred design approach. As explained in the toolkit, "[M]any mAgri services that have launched in emerging markets have suffered from low user adoption, despite coming from leading mobile network operators and value-added service (VAS) providers." This toolkit was therefore designed to provide operational guidance on how to bring the user-centred design approach into the product development process to better connect mAgri services with the needs of farmers and other key actors in the ecosystem.

As defined in the toolkit, "[T]he user-centered design approach puts farmers and their experience at the center of the product and service design, and is grounded on a continuous and structured interaction with end users. This approach helps to translate the solid understanding of users who are into a product and value proposition, and ensures that all aspects of the service - from the overall experience to each detailed feature - are verified with target users." The design process focuses on engaging the farmer at all stages of the product development - from the early moment of identifying the opportunities and generating concepts, to the advanced stages of product realisation, execution, and scaling.

The toolkit is one of the outcomes of a partnership between the GSMA mAgri Programme and frog, a global design and strategy firm that specialises in bringing a user-centred design approach into the product development process. Both organisations worked closely with six mobile network operators (MNOs) in Malawi, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Ghana to develop and launch mobile agriculture services. These MNO services targeted smallholder farmers and focused on providing agriculture information and advisory services, as well as nutrition-sensitive agricultural information and tips, and in some cases mobile financial services.

The toolkit is divided up into modules which represent the five stages in the user-centred design process. These are:

• Plan - to apply a user-centred process, you need to first align on team setup, existing knowledge, and assumptions. This includes discussing the overall goal for the mAgri service and how to set up user research to ensure that farmers’ voices and their ecosystem are integrated into the mAgri service.
• Learn - To create meaningful products, you need to be closer to the user, market, and context of use. This understanding starts with going out in the field, asking the right questions, and testing hypotheses with farmers to guide organisations throughout the design process.
• Create - To develop a mAgri concept that is deeply rooted in insights captured in the field, you need to analyse the information collected and identify the right opportunities for your mAgri service, considering all the diverse voices of the farmers and their ecosystem.
• Develop - To shift from concept to realisation, you need to prioritise features and plan how to create value, deliver, and capture it over time. While the product starts to take shape, there is a need to organise additional validation sessions with the user to make sure the product is going in the right direction.
• Maintain - The launch is only the beginning of the journey, not the goal. When the product launches, projects need to continuously gather feedback from farmers and the ecosystem to refine and improve the product, looking at all the aspects that shape the final user experience.

Each section opens with a description of the product development phase and a summary of the tools suggested for preparation, activities, and outcomes of the phase. Each tool is described with indication of time, materials, complexity, and resources needs, as well as detailed instructions. Some of the tools include real stories from the field that help put a specific tool into context and provide additional suggestions on how to apply it. Where appropriate, modules also provide blank worksheets or templates.