Indigo Marketplace
Post MVP improvements • Mobile responsive and desktop app
Indigo is an agriculture technology startup that is redefining how commodity crops are grown and sold. The groundbreaking Indigo Marketplace application allows growers to sell directly to grain buyers, cutting out several layers of middlemen and empowering them to maximize their earnings, a radical disruption to how grain is traditionally bought and sold.
Moving to Mobile First
We built the MVP version of Indigo Marketplace as a desktop application thinking that users would prefer to use a large screen to view crop quality specifications and their complex pricing matrices. One of the first post-release learnings was that growers don’t want to be on their computers after a long day in the fields, and more importantly, they want to be able to respond to bids right away, from wherever they are. We needed to provide them with a mobile version.
My role on this project
Design
Designed and optimized all screens and workflows with a mobile-first approach to accommodate usage habits.
Research
Discovered unmet needs through user feedback sessions and iterated quickly to address them by changing our approach or adding features.
Visual Design
Revised the visual presentation as the Indigo Design System evolved and grew. Contributed new components back into the library.
In the MVP, there was a lot of detail, making it difficult for growers to view it on their phones.
For the first iteration, I designed an expanding card-based solution and made the view responsive on the phone. It was better, but still too focused on the desktop’s larger screen.
Taking a mobile first approach allowed even more simplification and focus on how data was presented.
The mobile designs drove changes to the desktop version, including new navigation and filtering.
Results
Met launch deadline six weeks after initial conversations, amidst requirements that changed daily
Released in September 2018, as of December 2018 the Indigo Marketplace had almost 5,000 growers and 560 buyers generating transactions over $10 million
Automating Crop Transactions
Crops are sold as commodities, with a huge disconnect between buyers and sellers. Today’s buyers have very specific needs and struggle to find the high-quality or specialty grain they’re looking for. Growers are not rewarded for producing superior crops and often end up accepting lower prices than the crops are worth.
Why is this important?
If a wheat farm is 1,000 acres and the average yield of wheat per acre is 47 bushels
If a grower produced 14% protein wheat, he could expect an additional $0.11/bushel, an increase of $5,170
It might not seem like a lot of money, but that could be the difference between the farm being profitable and taking a loss.
Indigo’s plan is to disrupt the status quo by allowing both sides to specify quality measures, agronomic practices, or any other desirable attributes and enable higher value transactions based on those. Taking it a step further, Indigo wants to empower growers to initiate transactions by defining their own “offers” and having the system execute a sale automatically when there’s a match.
Historically, a bid contains minimal quality, agronomic or varietal information. Important contractual terms that are tied to payment are unstructured, making it impossible for the system to match bids with grower inventory or offers.
Designs
Bid Creation with Quality and Agronomic Attributes - The grain buyer creates a structured bid with the price directly tied to quality and the unstructured text block is reduced to include only standard terms.
Grower Offers - The content populates from inventory, including any verified quality results.
Because bids and offers are completely aligned, the system automatically matches buyers with growers and executes a transaction, so growers maximize their revenue and buyers get the specialized grain they need.
