AgDirect is FCSAmerica’s equipment financing program. AgDirect Online allows farm dealers to submit applications for financing, run quotes on equipment and complete various administrative tasks. The old tool was created over ten years ago and was extremely outdated.
The Challenge
The current tool is outdated, has a poor user experience and times out after 20 minutes.
Design a new tool that accomplishes these high level goals:
1. create a new application creation tool with ability to manage applications
2. create a new quote center with ability to run quotes, compare, email and text
3. make it fast and easy to use with a great user experience
My role in this project included UX research, UX strategy, wire framing. interaction design, prototyping, usability testing and visual design.
The Process
I opted for a lean approach which emphasizes research, rapid sketching, wireframing and prototyping, user feedback and design mockups. By including key stakeholders and the development team at specific intervals, I create great team collaboration with lots of great ideas and a strong sense of ownership.
Research
During the UX research portion of this project I used qualitative and quantitative methods which included interviews and contextual inquires along with competitive research.
There are three typical users of this tool: internal sales representatives, sales people at dealerships and external users visiting the public facing website which can only interact with the quoting center.
• Internal sales representatives are younger and on the phones most of the day. They are technically savvy and have widescreen monitors. They help dealers process applications when the dealer is having issues submitting an application.
• Sales people at dealerships are slightly older and interact with customers most of the day. They don’t have as much technical background but can still work a computer and have a smart phone. Many of them have an ag background and still work on family farms.
• External users typically encompass a younger and older generation. The older generation would rather be out farming but still need to access information to grow their business while the younger generation is technically savvy and looks forwarding to using technology to help them make decisions.
Sketching
I typically always being a project by sketching with the key stakeholders and the development team that will be involved in the development of the tool. The goal of these sessions is idea generation.
Early sketches exploring options for the new tool.
Wireframe & Prototype
Once there are a lot of ideas from sketching, I take them and start to work on bringing all the best ideas together into wireframes. This is one of the most time intensive pieces of the project. I worked with the product owners many times throughout this process and rely on the rest of our design team to go through feedback sessions.
Wireframes
Usability Testing
Once the wireframes were in a good spot and they met the business requirements, I did usability testing. For this piece I tested with five different users - three with sales people at the dealership and two internal sales representatives. Overall, testing went very well. I uncovered a few usability issues which we fixed in the wireframes.
Usability testing sessions and one of the testing scripts
Visual Design
Once the wireframes were in a good spot, I used AgDirect’s existing visual style to start to style all the screens. This is the part of the project that I enjoy the most because it makes it real.
Final Designs - Dashboard
Final Designs - Application Flow
Final Designs - Quote Center
Final Designs - Responsive Web
Additional Developer Resource
For many of the developers on this project this was the first time they had worked on a responsive website. To help aid in this and introduce responsive design, I created this quick reference PDF guide which helped tremendously in learning how responsive websites look on each of the devices.
