User Journey of a Kenyan potato farmer

Project Context

SoilCares has developed technology that allows you to easily measure the soil quality of farmers. Normally, soil samples will need to be send to a laboratory which is very time consuming, and can sometimes take months to get a response from the lab.

The handheld device of SoilCares allows to measure the soil quality on site. Since the handhelds require a high investment, direct sales towards farmers is not viable. Hence, Soilcares, Proportion, Vijana Reloaded teamed up, with financial support of the Rabobank to research and design a business model whereby youth can be trained and supported as agents in offering soil testing as a service to farmers.

Proportion was asked to lead the HCD process from research, ideation, prototyping up to piloting of agent model for agri extension services for farmers, that can be a self-employment opportunity for youth groups.

How did you apply the tool?

We identified a step-by-step journey of a potato farmer, including the challenges per phase. This was used to co-create opportunities for business activities for the youth based on the challenges in different seasons.

This resulted in portfolio of services that youth agents offer in order to diversify their revenue streams while giving year-round support for farmers. 

We gathered input for the user journey through interviews with farmers as well as mapping sessions with youth to co-create job opportunities along the journey.

Did you make any custom changes to the tool? Why?

We simplified the tool, but identifying only the main phases, activities and challenges of the farmer. We then added a line for solutions and business opportunities underneath.

What worked well?

Merging data from multiple interviews with potato farmers into one simplified journey.
Co-creating the solutions & business opportunities with youth to understand what business activities interested them.
Visualizing the final user journey map with simple illustrations to be able to present easily to the project stakeholders and clients.

What did you learn?

There are many individual differences between users who were interviewed. So you will need to choose to either make a user/persona-specific journey or a more general journey. In this case we mainly wanted to identify the business opportunities, so we opted for keeping the user journey more general.

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