Kaset Go

KasetGo Research

THE RESEARCH 🔍
Our user group consisted of farmers from all over Thailand. Due to the impact of the COVID situation, we were unable to conduct the research face-to-face until 10 months after the project started.
Inception workshop
We started this project by running a 5-day inception workshop with clients and stakeholders. This collaborative workshop gave us more details about the project, shared previous findings and understanding, set a vision and objective, and planned the structure of the project. This helped us speed up the kick-off process of iteration zero as fast as possible. In this project, I led the design sessions, such as user journey, personas, and design team structure planning.
Remote test experiment
In the beginning, I did remote testing using video calls with step-by-step instruction to test whether we can use this tool for user testing or not.

The results didn't turn out as good as I expected. Half of the users were unable to perform the test. Lack of mobile signal making it impossible to download the app and the prototype.

However, the other half of the users could learn how to use video-call and completed the test. But the downside was spending half the time explaining how to use video-call, which does not contribute any value to the testing.
Thus, this method is considered to be ineffective and too expensive for this user group.
Some research objectives 🎯
• To test method and tools for usability testing with real farmers
• To understand the key success of building an existing community and why farmers join a community, validate some concepts and hypotheses
• Understand the personality and behavior of the farmer, understand our competitor, validate the design options and flow
• To find a way to increase the level of cooperation from our users
• To validate the new direction of the app ‘Making a community of professional farmers’
Phone and chat interview
After the first experiment, we realized that video-call was not the right tool for this user group. So we switched focus to using the more traditional approach, the phone interview, and the chat interview. During the phone interview with a user, I created an internal video conference room for a team member. This allowed my teammates to participate in the interview session by listening to the interview and sending their questions in the chat panel.
Survey
A survey is a common practice to use, and it fits perfectly considering this COVID situation. We sent out the survey 2-3 weeks after product launch in each phase and occasionally sent it case-by-case. However, we soon realized that we were unable to gain many insights from this method, so we tended to use it in combination with other methods as well.
Beta users group
We do not want sugar-coated answers, but we do want to know what users actually feel. Thus, the beta users group was created. We hand-picked our end-users with interesting usage habits, most of which were Smart farmers, and sent them an invitation to join the group. Inside the group, these special users could test and share their ideas directly with our team and receive exclusive privileges. Also, the team could use the group to build relationships with users.

Lately, we promoted this group to be an ‘Advisor group’ with more privileges to reward their valuable contributions.
Field research
After the COVID situation was lightened, we strived to go on the field again to update our understanding of real user behavior, farming trends, and to test our fresh-from-the-oven idea, 'The Farming LinkedIn'
Some Key Insights 🌟
Community
A key success of building community depends on the stage and maturity of the community
Early phase: Attractive content, Connecting people, Niche interest
Middle phase: Clear rule, Content consistency, Conversation starter

People tend to stay in a community because of the content and connection they have inside
Farmer behavior
Farmers give the highest value on the information correctness and credibility of the answerer

‘Smart farmer’ group tends to check and get knowledge with people they know more than other groups

Feedback from Smart farmers have higher quality

The new direction ‘Farming LinkedIn’ is suitable for only the ‘Smart farmer’ persona, not all groups
App usage
Most of our users are not Smart farmer

The main expectation both before and after use is about knowledge inside the app

Lurking and browsing journey is 64% of usage situation so we should consider optimizing this first
POSTING
Farmers can post questions or share their farming stories with photo and video attachments.
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Design solutions
Make posting journey as fast as possible to drive users to post

Add the ‘Share story’ tab to encourage users to share a story. Having stories inside the community will promote a lively environment and increase the number of views and engagement

Users can give tags to their post to support content categorization
ANSWERING
Farmers can answer others’ questions by replying or receive answers from experts inside the community
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Design solutions
Allow experts to type an answer or endorse any reply that they agree with, to ensure the correctness of the answer

Indicate the reply by an expert or the endorsed reply, make it easy for readers to find the recommended answer

Provide web app access for experts to support writing long answers
BROWSING
Gain access to the latest agriculture knowledge such as certified expert answers, crop price, curated practices, tips and techniques
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Design solutions
Put highlight content on the top, make it easiest for lurkers to glance and read high-quality content

Highlight any questions that contain reply or endorsement from the expert, make it more attractive to check the answer inside
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Provide detailed profile section of farmer users to increase credibility in their answers and encourage them to connect with each other
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Collaborate with a group of agronomists to create top-notch content
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