I have been working in the Agri-IT sector for over a year now and have conducted deep research into the adoption of technology by the farming community. All avenues explored to accelerate the adoption of ICT lead to dead ends which I hypothesised in a previous post. I know that ‘content is king’ but when your user base can’t find or navigate to the content, its symptomatic of a greater problem.

Using a traditional approach to site design and navigation (top menu, left menu, content pane etc.) hasn’t worked based on usability studies carried out and the results from in-page analytics. I then tried replicating the look and feel of a newspaper/newsletter with some success (Irish Potatoes). However, the critical mass of users were not visiting the site on a regular basis. Then I had my eureka moment!!

Cross Generational & Cross Compatible

I was trying to facilitate a service where farmers would sit down and systematically check all the information they require in the one sitting. Farmers traditionally aren’t active users of the Internet and the Web, and will generally set aside time for ‘surfing’ like they do for everything else

• Morning – milk the cows/buy some feed/visit the bank etc.
• Afternoon – dinner/1 o’clock news/ spread some fertiliser etc
• Evening – feed the animals/ 6 o’clock news/ ‘check the net’???

This approach, yet again, was unsuccessful.

As stated in ‘Do Farmers Dream of Electric Sheep‘ , I was aware of all the barriers present;

• Lack of training
• Fear
• Resistance to change
• Physical awkwardness
• Lack of broadband in the last mile

I have tried to counteract all these barriers by creating a comprehensive training programme catering for all abilities and skills and actively encouraged farm families to attend the training. Currently, I am trying to close off a deal that will offer a decent specified laptop with a viable broadband solution (mobile, DSL or satellite where applicable) to further drive adoption. I still feel that the impact of these initiatives will be less than spectacular.

The majority of farmers use phones, and are willing to pay (excessive in some cases) money for the privilege to hear the weather on-demand. I created an IVR system for farmers to call into and get the latest market information across the different commodities and low and behold, I got healthy traffic. This lead to my ‘eureka’ moment – the phone is the key form factor for the farming demographic. Now, how do I get farmers with a plethora of different devices (most use non-smart phones) using the Internet multiple times a day?

Web Apps

I decided that if I was going to focus on mobile devices as the means of driving Internet adoption, I would also have to include the web too. Now, there are currently 5 big players in the Smart Phone OS market as I see it – Apple OS, Android, Symbian, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7 (not necessarily in that order) and these operate on multiple different devices which each have their own way of interacting with OS’s. As the project I am on is tight on resources, I could not afford to develop apps for different form factors and different platforms as well as the web. That’s when I started using Google Chrome’s Appstore and realised that I could do the same for my project.

After many weeks of development, I am just about to enter a closed beta trial with a cross sector of the farming community; young, old, experienced, and inexperienced. I will compare usability with traditional websites and observe if and how they use the apps on a variety of phones and even a couple of tablets.

Should be an interesting couple of months!