Project Overview
This soon to be released app is an initiative of the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia. The existing lambing planner is a hand-held, paper based tool targeted at farmers. It allows you to change a lambing date or a joining date to see the impacts of that on other key times in the reproductive year. It also features a short best-practice guide for lambing.
The app is being created on iOS and Android, taking this digital and making the whole process more intuitive, cost effective and accessible to all.
Project Commissioner
Department of Agriculture and Food
Project Creator
Team
Project manager: Gwendolyn Ong
Designer: Ryan Liu
Development team: Dapper Apps
Project Brief
The brief from the Department of Agriculture and Food, was to transform their paper model to a workable app for both iOS and Android that is accessible for farmers all over the world.
It had to maintain the existing agriculture branding guidelines, consider accessibility guidelines (visibility, colour guidelines, etc).
The lambing planner sets out key management operations that make up the breeding cycle, providing information on:
- ewe and ram nutrition
- condition score targets at different stages
- reproductive management
- lambing guidelines.
Project Need
The Department of Agriculture print thousands of paper lambing planners and the cost of distributing these is getting quite hefty. They had also been considering making it digital, knowing how much easier this would be to use and distribute to farmers - particularly considering the distance and often remote locations of farms.
Once completed, it will allow distribution globally with the touch of a button. The app is offered for free and an excellent resource for sheep producers to use, supporting the industry as a whole.
User Experience
The app is designed with a farmer’s approach in mind, with consideration to the existing paper model (the dial shape). The UI design had to be mindful that this is something the sheep producers are already familiar with.
Colours were also taken from the Department of Agriculture's design guide, so that that level of cognisance was maintained.
The functionality has been kept purposefully simple and intuitive, so those who may not be tech 'savvy' will be able to use the app with ease.
Farmers can also create unlimited lambing plans using the app, with an accurate date reading for each stage. This is a feature which did not exist before.
The farmers will also be able to provide feedback within the app through a contact form, to ensure the user experience is continuously improved over time.
The easy-to-use dial design allows you to select a joining date and from that point, gain a series of guidelines and recommendations including the use of teasers, ram preparation, joining ratio, ewe feed requirements and the timing of worm egg count and lamb vaccinations.
Project Marketing
The app is yet to be released, however the Department of Agriculture and Food, WA, will circulate the app to their pre-existing network.
A landing page on their website will be dedicated to the app to promote further accessibility and downloads.
Project Privacy
There is no collection of user information in the app, so there are no privacy issues presented. Further to this, all content on the app is stored locally.
AgTech
AgTech provides a window into the transformative effect that tech can have on a traditional industry. Agriculture has a powerful connection to the physical world, however it is increasingly enabled and enriched by technology. Some see tech as the key to securing agriculture prosperity through the increasing use of innovations such as cloud analytics, AI, drones, big data and autonomous vehicles.
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