Bayer Cloud Solutions

Ensuring your daily muesli

Whenever you visit a grocery store, your favorite muesli is waiting for you on a full shelf. So convenient! It's hard to imagine the amount of planning that goes into that. The food production alone is a logistical miracle. How can the producers, at any time, ensure the need for fresh grain, with all the external influences?

In collaboration with Microsoft, Bayer has developed Agri-Food Cloud Platform. Consumer goods producers can access satellite data to analyze the development of their crops. Our task was to create an interactive prototype that introduces this platform’s technologies to potential users.

CHALLENGE

Each client is different

As diverse as our tastes in food are, so are the challenges for those who produce it. Different data is relevant for the muesli producer than for the pasta producer. Each user will take advantage of this platform in their own way. How can we bring the benefits of this new platform to a wide audience? The users of this tool are neither data specialists nor engineers. How do we create an intuitive prototype for users who have no experience analyzing this type of data?

“A deep dive into agronomy and technology allowed us to enable traceability and transparency of the supply chain for timely action.”
Dina Gkritzapi, UX Designer at Ginetta

SOLUTION

An interactive prototype as a showcase

To begin, we conducted numerous interviews with two groups of people: With satellite data experts, who showed us the possibilities of this technology, and with food industry experts, who explained the challenges and needs of their planning process.

This allowed us to create a relatable scenario and persona fitting to our broad target group. Around that we built a prototype showing how they can use the technology in their individual context. Modular data visualization brings the relevant data to life.

Everybody's language: Illustrations

Even the most valuable data is worthless if it is not presented in an understandable way. Simple illustrations replace complex agronomical data and show which growth stage the grain is in. Helpful insights, gained from automated data analysis, complement the visualizations on a textual level. The user gets to know the platform intuitively and can work with it efficiently right away.

Travel in time

The condition of grain fields can be represented in snapshots. Growth, on the other hand, is a temporal process. A timeline allows the user to compare how individual parameters on the map behave over time in order to draw important conclusions. For example, a steady increase in moisture in the fields in relation to the biomass level and the specific growth stage of the crop may be an indication of fungal growth.

Sustainability insights

How forward-thinking would the Agri-Food Cloud Platform be if it didn't also address future issues? That's why the interactive prototype also offers numerous insights and answers the following sustainability questions about grain production, among others: Are the fields irrigated efficiently? Do they include a healthy amount of cover crop? How are the fields tilled?

CONCLUSION

Rocket science for non-rocket scientists

The interactive prototype is used by Bayer Cloud Solutions at B2B trade shows and presentations. Potential customers can experience Agri-Food Cloud platform’s benefits such as the traceability of the supply chain first-hand.

The interactive experience is much more comprehensible and convincing than a frontal presentation. And let's not forget: with this project, we were able to do our part to ensure that you will still be able to access your favorite muesli at any time in the future.