Brief

Botanist is an AgriTech startup from Norway dedicated to transforming modern farming through smart, affordable, and user-friendly solutions. They have produced a unique sensor network and intelligent valve control system that allows farmers to intelligently manage their soil moisture levels.

While their system provided detailed data for individual fields, they lacked a central dashboard for at-a-glance monitoring.

As the sole UI/UX designer on this project, my goal was to create a dashboard that allowed farmers to:

• Quickly see the overall status of all their fields.

• Monitor critical data like soil moisture and disease risk.

• View and manage system alerts.

• Personalize their dashboard with custom crop details.

From Research to Layout

1. Research & Inspiration I started by reviewing Botanist’s existing system, which consisted of individual data pages for each field. This helped me understand the existing information architecture and what users were already familiar with. Since direct competitors in this niche are rare, I focused on defining a clear structure from first principles, prioritizing clarity and speed to insight.

2. Visual Setup The client's primary brand color was green. I refined their palette to improve accessibility and legibility, creating distinct, high-contrast colors for critical data indicators (e.g., alerts, status levels). The overall UI is clean and simple, ensuring the design supports the content without creating visual clutter.

3. Layout Planning After wireframing several concepts, I landed on a vertical scroll layout. This ensures the interface is scalable and remains intuitive on smaller devices, avoiding unnecessary clicks or nested views.

The final layout includes:

• A personalized welcome message.

• A system status overview with quick-read visuals.

• A small weather section to help farmers connect soil conditions with upcoming changes, useful for planning irrigation.

• A "My Fields" section displaying a card for each field, containing key data (crop name, soil moisture, alerts) and a clear call-to-action.

Each card uses a consistent info block pattern (Moisture → Alerts → Size) for predictability. All status colors were checked for accessibility, and icons are used alongside color to ensure redundancy for all users.

The UX Journey

Here’s how a user moves through the page:

1. Welcome & Personal Greeting - Builds trust and familiarity with a personalized message.

2. Status Overview - A quick summary of overall field health using clear icons and status colors helps users immediately understand if action is needed.

3. Weather Preview - Gives context for soil decisions without needing to leave the dashboard, useful for planning irrigation.

4. Field Grid - Each field is represented by a card with a large, user-uploaded image and key data points in a consistent structure.

5. Visual Prioritization - Fields with alerts or deficits visually stand out using background color and icon emphasis, making problem areas faster to spot.

6. CTA: “View Field” - Every card leads to a more detailed view, giving users a clear path forward without overwhelming them with options.

Final Design

Fields Dashboard

Detailed Field View

Reflection

This was a challenging project due to the early stage of the product. With the backend and hardware still in development, much of the structure had to be inferred from early data and discussions. However, this provided a valuable opportunity to make UX decisions from first principles and ship a functional V1 that we could build on.

My approach was to balance a data-driven UI with approachable visuals by using iconography, adaptive colors, and simple grid layouts. This project was a valuable exercise in designing for real-world physical systems, where data is critical but the audience doesn’t want to be overwhelmed.

The final layout is designed for scalability, working whether a user has two fields or five. A key learning was structuring the dashboard for actionable insight, not just data display, helping users immediately know what needs their attention.