CASE STUDY - 2020

Murumbidgee Irrigation

INTRODUCTION

krost Furniture

Murrumbidgee Irrigation is one of five privately owned irrigation companies in New South Wales Australia. They provide irrigation water and drainage services to an area known as the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA).

Their core business is the delivery of water for irrigation farming. They manage an extensive supply and drainage network to over 3,300 landholdings owned by over 2,500 customers within an area of 670,000 hectares.

MY ROLE

UX Designer— discovery, user research, design, testing
Front-end Developer - HTML/CSS/JS

 

TEAM

Elisa Kim, Project Manager
Rhea Marra, UI Designer

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THE PROBLEM

I found that their existing design was outdated — providing both unnecessary and under-explained information and also running in older version of our CMS. Since it is running in older version of CMS the website is not compatible with responsive layouts especially in mobile devices.

Also, the website has many unwanted pages and features in different sections of the website. More specifically, the forms used in the site is different in several pages but actions the same functionality.

 

GOALS

Our high level goals were:

  1. Finding out the user pain points and understanding the business needs to make clear decisions.
  2. Providing new look and feel
  3. Convey appropriately to a regional drought-affected region
  4. Need easy way to access contact form
  5. Access to Water Pricing Calculator
  6. Quick access to MI News and updates
  7. Provide information for shareholders
  8. Increase the user retention
  9. Creating Responsive Layout

THE PROCESS

My first step was to identify the business goals, exisiting tickets(from the Helpdesk Support team) and possible problems with the stakeholders. Then, I did a research on the website and users to gain more insights. After having the needed information, I iterated on 3 rounds of wireframe design and finally transfered to the UI designer, I was also handling the front-end development work for this project.

UX design process
 

STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEW

I first reached out to our customer support team to understand if any support tickets related to this project. We found that there are a lot of tickets related to forms, widgets and menu navigations.

Then, I prepared questionnaire to understand the client better and who are their customers and what they trying to accomplish?

Stakeholder Interview Questionnaire

krost old site

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

Also, I analyse their main competitors and get acquainted about the features. I reviewed several similar websites, talked to the stakeholders and made a list of both implemented and planned UX flows.

Murray irrigation
Key Features
  • Feature focused on deliviering the water excahnge and allocation data
  • Clear and organised content structure
  • Better navigation system
  • Clean design focusing on delivering the features
 

PERSONA

By gathering data and conducting interviews with users and stakeholders, we were able to figure out the target users who have interests in improving their workspace and office interiors. These are the highlights for each persona:

 
Primary Persona

Emma Robinson is the owner of Murrum Organic, a local farming collective that grows fresh produce. Emma sells his produce at a number of markets, using detailed reports and analytics to track what and how well the field is maintained.

persona creation
Secondary Persona

Graham Dale has a background in finance and currently a portfolio of investments - mostly companies that have small to expansion stage and have a rebounding if the right strategy, tools and team are in place. Dale is a fat-thinker, and his job requires that he must make decisions quickly and accurately for business.

persona creation

RESEARCH INSIGHT

 
User-centered design canvas
 
1. BUSINESS

The largest private irrigation companies in Australia serving over 3,260 landholdings that is owned by over 2,300 shareholder customers within an area of 378,911 hectares. They provide irrigation water and drainage services to a diverse and highly productive agricultural region

2. USERS
  • Farmers - who want to check for the water supply in their region
  • Industries to monitor the water flows and drainage system
  • Shareholders to keep track of the Company plans, annual reports and community updates
3. USER'S PAIN POINTS

These are the findings from the exisiting version and suppor ticket issues:

  • Complex navigation menu system
  • User finding difficult to raise request through form
  • No quik navigation to the Easy water feature
  • No clear identification to the projects section
  • Reports, Water quality details table cut down mobile device
4. MOTIVES
  • Quick access to the water login, projects, and Scheduled charges
  • Find information about the company and its services
  • Need quick contact form to raise queries
  • Access to shareholders/leadership information
  • Calculating the water usage and its costs
  • Easy ways to make payment(Customer Reference Number)
5. SOLUTIONS
  • Better visual design for users to access the page effectively
  • Improved navigation menu
  • Quick access to the features(easywater, schedule charges, Payment, careers, etc.)
  • Unique style for contact us throughout the site
  • Organised content with quick right menu to navigate other pages
  • Overall new styles and visual enhancement to the site content and landing pages

USER FLOWS


MI user flow

Initial Sketches

before moving to tools for designing I started by sketching few designs and see what ideas I can come up with.

WIREFRAMES

Next step was to create low-fidelity wireframes. I made only for the major template pages, for remaining screens we apply the same design pattern to the inner pages following the major templates.

Mi Wireframe krost Wireframe

HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

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MI High Fidelity

Home Page

Landing Page

MI High Fidelity
MI High Fidelity

Content Page

Pricing Calculator Page

MI High Fidelity

HIGH FIDELITY MOBILE PROTOTYPE

MI High Fidelity

THE OUTPUT

Here are the few major areas that we have improved for the Murrumbidgee Irrigation,

  1. Overall, improved the website look and feel.
  2. New design implmentation for responsive devices.
  3. Improved contact us form across the site.
  4. We have created major templates for landing and content pages that can be used for the other similar pages.
  5. Organised the features, such that it can be easily accesible by the users.
  6. I have implemented the site with the latest version of our product CMS, so it will make the client to manage their website easily.
  7. Improved navigation for both main menu and right menu.
  8. Organised shareholders details, resources and annual reports.
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