 I'm already founder and design director at Lollipop and it's amazing and what I'm here to present to one of the case studies that we designed at Lollipop. It's a project that's very close to my heart. So this project is called Farm Rise. So it's an application for farmers and to enable farmers and rural India. There are actually 90 plus applications in the app store for farmers and the question is are we going to build another application which will become a 91st application or is it something different that we can do there? So I'll just walk you through what we did here and how different we did and how did we address this problem. So when the client came to us it was Climate Corp, Climate Corp and Monsanto together wanted to bring some kind of digitization in the farming and when they came to us like any other project right, we all sit in a room and we discuss about what farmer wants and what farmer needs. So then we decided that we are not the right people to decide what they want and what they need. So we actually requested the client if we can do research. So when you say research not many clients out there will accept or even encourage research because it requires budget, it requires time. Also the project that any design studio or you guys, any designers design it's a last minute job. So then we proposed research, we said three months of research because we want to really go stay with farmers, understand their pain points and then come up with a solution. So what is design? Design is a beautiful solution, right? So you come up with a solution and then you beautify it. So we were lucky enough, the client accepted, okay let's do research. The first meeting with the client was in a room where we were thinking of all kind of features and functionalities and without realizing whether farmers have a smartphone, whether they are tech enabled, whether they have enough network in their area, none of these questions were asked. We directly jumped into the features and functionality and technology behind it. So the effect of farm rise today, we have 100k downloads and the average session time has gone up to 11 percent. This indirectly will also help reduce the suicide rates and also the increase in the GDP. I'll tell you what farm rise is. So the very first question is, there are farmers here, there is technology here and are farmers willing to accept technology or adapt to any of the new things out there to get some of those technology things into their farming. When we sat down, when we did the research, right, in 2006 Mr. Rampi Rajkumar introduced a chip where you plug it to your pump set, the water motor and with one SMS you can on the motor and the water flows into the field. So this was one of the part breaking thing in the technology, in agriculture. Now the answer, the thing that we found out was many small farmers with one or two acres to large farming farmers, they already have this kind of a technology in villages. So it's as simple as sending an SMS saying water S, water no. Water S will let the water inside the field, water no will stop the water inside the field. So when we went down meeting farmers to see whether they're really happy with this technology or whether how useful it is for them and the first interview that we did, right, one of the farmers said he has to cycle 10, 15 kilometers to the farm only to switch on the motor and come back. After this technology, he doesn't do that anymore. So it saves time. So the answer was yes, farmers are ready to accept technology and they're open to it if it is affordable, if it is easy to access and they're ready to bring in technology into the farming. So there are two kind of farmers here. One is farming where ancestral farmlands have been passed on where 10 acres and above. They're all rich farmers. They're considered as rich farmers in India. Another one is one or two acres, which is really they are that farming, the kind of activities they follow is something not modern, it's been passed on from Manchester little things where they use gober and those kind of things for farming and they do, they fear adapting to any new things. So our team interviewed 150 plus farmers. The first was in Karnataka and then Maharashtra and we spent close to three months. They spent day in and day out with farmers. So our research, right, it doesn't consist of any design related questions. All we want to do is spend time with farmers, just observe them and that's it, do nothing. Don't ask them questions because if you ask them questions, right, the answer is away. So our research was like just observe them and see what are their activities in a day looks like, what time do they wake up, they listen to radio, then they watch TV, in what kind of series do they watch on TV, especially in Karnataka, they watch, there's an agricultural serial that comes in ETV. So they're very glued to that to see what's happening in the market in a Monday or what's the crop rise, what's the weather like. So they're very curious to know about all those things. So the thing that we found out was information was very important for them to gain knowledge and take farming to the next level. So these are some of the pitches where our team spent three months. So every time they interviewed a farmer, they sent back the report to us and we had a team back in our studio to make some sense out of the report. So we waited for all the researchers to finish their job and then come back and collect the data and see what is that we have to build for the farmers and how was design going to help to reduce some of the things, their daily activities and to make sure that farmers adapt to the smart farming. So some of the key factors, right, what we wanted to bring into this application was the information first before bringing in any interactive things inside the information. So information about geography and infrastructure, the resources, the problem makers, influences, social norms, politicals and weather. Weather was very important. So every morning they were more worried about the weather and the next after weather the loans, the small farmers always dependent on the loans. So the government sanctioned loan or public financial institutions and all that. Another interesting thing is with any new thing in farming, right, there is an influencer in the village. So this influencer is the one who will educate the farmers about all new things. It could be new tele-serial or it could be new radio station or it could be anything to do with farming or it could be new pesticides or any seeds or any information on the other side of the world about farming. So we went and met the influencer first and surprisingly the influencer was well aware of all the applications in the market and sometimes this influencer is appointed by the panchayat in the village and at times influencer exist in the family. When I say exist in the family, it's like their grandkids who are little aware of the technology, they know what the smartphone is, they know everything what's happening on the other side of the world, these are all influencers. So what they do is they tell their parents or into farming or the influencer from the panchayat tell the farmers that look it's time you buy a smartphone and with smartphone will help you with this, this and this. And thanks to Reliance Geo and some of the hardware manufacturers where they made it so affordable, today smartphone is only 2200 rupees and there is an EMI on it. And Reliance Geo, it's just 100 rupees and for farmers there is a subsidy. So for 100 rupees you get 100 GB data. So the hardware is affordable and next one is network is spread across and now these two things are ready. Now it's up to farmers to buy the phone and start accessing the data. The very first thing that influence farmers to buy a phone was the video consumption. So they have seen their friends watching videos, it could be news again or entertainment videos, they always sit in that one area where in the village they are under the tree and they keep watching the phone. So that one farmer influenced another farmer to buy a phone and it's like 80% of the farmers in India have smartphones, whether they are using smartly, whether they have the knowledge to download an app or no, that was something we had to find out in the next phase of the research. So influencers help them to download application and they also help them to understand how and what are the benefits of the smartphone. These are the very common applications that we found in most of the phones. WhatsApp, every farmer add WhatsApp. Everyone, seriously everyone add WhatsApp and Google news updates as soon as you open the screen the news updates from Google about farming or anything related to news, politics and all that stuff. Camera, they are super fascinated about taking photos and all that. And YouTube to consume videos and there is another application called Eekisan, so most of the farmers add this application. I will tell you some insights about WhatsApp. So the next research was let's understand what is WhatsApp and how is farmer using a WhatsApp. So in couple of interviews, we just observe what does a farmer do with WhatsApp. A farmer has never ever sent a message to anyone. For the last one and a half to two years that he has had a smartphone and a WhatsApp, he has never sent a message. The reason is as soon as the keyboard pops up, there is so much of thing happening on the screen to get the keyboard down, he is restarting the phone. We were shocked to see why did you restart the phone, he said I want this down. So then I asked what do you do with the smartphone, so what do you do with the WhatsApp and all that. Then he said look, I receive Sai Baba messages in the morning, I forward that. I receive jokes, I forward that. Now observe forward, what is forward, forward is not type, it's tap. So we learned something there, until unless you build applications, you learn something from this and build applications, right. Then these guys are ready to adapt and understand and learn from it. And our target audience, simple, farmers who own a smartphone and farmers who own a smartphone. The digital transformation in India has been massive, so smartphones are not limited only to middle class or rich people now, it is so affordable, smartphones are everywhere. So in 2019-20, we will have most of the farmers using smartphones and the best part is the Client, Climate Corp and Monsanto gifted smartphones to farmers with a proper network and also they deployed influencers in every village to help farmers to onboard. Because to any application, even our application, right, requires some simple information from the farmer, that means he has to type. So we knew for the fact that if you have to onboard a farmer, he has to type something. If he has to type, he is not going to install the application. So we got influencers to help to load the application in the farmer's phone. So some of the facts that we had to keep in mind when we design an application, right, we can't go all crazy and when we came back, again we had another round of meeting, there is a lot of insights that we collected, we presented to the client and client coming from US, the first thing they said, can we have a Tinder kind of experience, elect Tinder and farmer, like where is it? So we said no Tinder, no crazy experiences, just leave them alone, we'll do a simple interface, then we'll test it out and if they get used to it, we'll do Tinder or whatever you want. So first thing is poor network. Network in the village is great. When they go to the farmland, it is not all the great. So we have to understand that when there is poor network, we can't have a graphic heavy application. It has to be super simple, load information really fast. And next one is low tech savviness. We know farmers are not tech savvy. We can't keep introducing new features and functionality inside. So we have to adapt to what they have already got used to. So some learnings from YouTube and WhatsApp and their regular other application they're used to, right? Your phone application where they call and receive phone calls, those are the things we observed and we documented those things and some of those behaviors we took straight into this application. And low RAM phones, 2,200 rupees phone comes with a 512 MB RAM. 512 MB RAM, if you run three applications, it'll hang. So that means we can't have all the super micro interactions. So we have to keep it super flat and no swipe, zoom and all that stuff. Keep it very simple and we can't play around with SVG. Five points or five minutes? Five minutes. Okay. An unconventional audience, skip, skip, skip. So language, local language, very important. We can't have an English application for a farmer. So relevance and familiarity, I spoke about your behavior from, take the behavior from the WhatsApp and other application. Okay, and the next one is when you come into the actual design. When we found a solution, now it's about beautification and how do we do that? So we looked at the notoscience. Notoscience is a font which is a default in all the Android phones. And the best part about notoscience, right, it has been out since the Lollipop version came up. And it works on the older version also. And notoscience has a multi, it supports multi language. So Google is going to come up with many other languages from Bengali to Odia to all this stuff. So we took a bet on notoscience and the notoscience today, it works on like three to five to six languages now. And the next one is Intelligent Caching. As anyone observed, they were opening our Facebook and turn it into an airplane mode and you just refresh it. It brings a new story. So we had something to learn from that. One is now that we onboard a farmer, we know what crops he is growing. So why don't we preload some of the information? Why does he have to keep downloading information? So for example, a farmer grows corn. We know he wants to know everything about corn. The Monday nearby, what are the pesticides he has to buy? What information we have to give around corn? So we preloaded all this information. And every time he comes into a good connection, we preload more information about corn into his farm. And the third one is Optimized Assets. Optimized Assets, it's like we can't go graphic heavy. So we use simple, very stupid proof. Every icon had a support text next to it. In one of the case, we designed an application for healthcare. We put a search icon there and we left it without putting search next to it. So one of the surgeon took it and he was double tapping on it, thinking it was a Zoom icon. So what did we learn from that? It's like people don't understand icons yet. You can't go crazy on icons. So every icon needs a support. Then the rest optimizing the behavior and the visual relatable things. And there's one minute and I'll play the video. So this is what we designed. This is the end product. So every vegetable and the crop is illustrated. This is satisfying the fine art inside us since we all come from a fine art background. So all the lemons and onions are illustrated. That's a notoscience font. Works perfect even in 11 pixels and it's readable. And the font size can be adjusted in the application. So every call to action had a much larger size than what's recommended from Google. If Google recommends 40 by 40 pixel as a tap area, we went 60 by 60 pixel. Because in an environment such as farming and the device, which is as low as lowest resolution, we have to keep the tapable area a little bigger. And also the colors were contrast tested. In a bright sunlight, will it be visible? So all the grays and the lighter grays were contrast tested. So you have tools available to do all this stuff, which is online. So you can test it on your monitor and you can pick a screen, whether it's a Gorilla screen or whether it's a different manufacturer's screen. So you can enter that. You can get the color contrast out. So this is it. And any questions? These guys keep reminding me about one minute, two minutes, now zero. OK. Hi. So I just want to know one thing. How you're handling the OS updates or something, like you may require to push some kind of updates for the app. And the farmers are not that tech savvy. So do you think a PWA kind of solution will be more proper here because they are having the cash issues and the low memory or RAM in the basic phones? I think PWA is a technology that's still emerging. We're not sure if it is going to be as big as a native app. So how you're handling right now the updates and everything? OS is a keyboard updating every six months or eight months or some security patches are coming in? So now, what's the current version of Android now? It's pi. Pi. Yeah. It's P, sorry. Given that farmers and their phones, we have a complete data of their handsets. And some of the handset doesn't support all the latest Android. So we stick back to the older version. And to pushing the data, we use a third party application. And whenever the network is great, we push it and we cache it. So this is a little bit of a technical thing. And I think the answer to this, our tech team has to come up with this one. So PWA is great. But the only great application in the PWA that I've seen is Flipkart. And is there any other PWA application out in the market? But PWA for a Toyota and a Toyota 3CT, I don't know how it works. So we'll have to, because there is a lot of limitations in PWA too. Any other questions? I wanted to ask, when you were doing the research and after that, when you were thinking of the solution, so was it one of the constraints that it has to be an app? Because I just want to understand when we talk of rural India, the penetration of the cellular phones is still more than the smartphones. And there are existing technologies like the IVR-based solutions. I mean, there are a lot of research projects like the, I'm just not recalling the name of the programs. There are a lot of education, a lot of ASHA workers' programs have been done on the IVR. So was that an option you explored, or being an app was a constraint for you? This is something that we didn't take a call on this. The Climate Corp and Monsanto was very clear that they wanted to take a mobile-first approach. And that they wanted to build an app. And they predicted that in 2020, most of the farmers will have mobile phone. And apart from mobile, there is no other way to reach out to farmers. You can reach out through a print medium or through campaigns. The IVR is also doing a good work, like educating people and doing the participatory approach. Like a lot of other health care activities are being done through IVR. I'm just saying because it's an underrated technology. I mean, not underrated, it's not explored. When we think of apps, we just don't ignore such technologies also. So simple answer, brand reach.