Information visualization for the salmon industry
March 2023 - April 2023
The Challenge
Our goal was to design a concept for a mobile app that provides situational awareness by displaying data on tank parameters and fish health.
My Role
I was a team member. This was an academic project for the master's program in interaction design at NTNU. I worked side by side with three other designers. The client was Clarify.
Context
- Clarify's platform indexes and visualizes data points in a timeline primarily using line graphs.
- These line graphs are effective for comparing current and past data, reviewing specific data points, and predicting future data trends.
- Compounding data from multiple sources can make the overview complex and challenging to interpret.
- Several customers in the aquaculture industry rely on Clarify for shared awareness of farm conditions.
- Enhancing user-friendly charts and visualizations is essential to improve data clarity in this context.
Design Process
We organized the workload into 6 weeks. Details can be seen in the table below.
- Understanding the project: We conducted desk research to gain an initial understanding of the industry and its challenges. We also conducted interviews with users to get a deep understanding of their needs, pain points, and behaviors.
- Synthesizing the insights: We analyzed the data gathered from the research and identified key themes and opportunities. This helped us to define the problem that we were trying to solve with the app.
- Prototyping: We created low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes of the app to gather feedback.
- Iterating on the prototype: We iterated on the prototype based on the feedback we received from users. We made changes to the design, functionality, and features of the app.
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Research and Iterations
Stakeholder map
We created a stakeholder map to ensure that we take into account and meet the needs of stakeholders involved throughout the project.
- Core users: Include fish farmers and operational technicians who will be using the app on a daily basis. The core users have been mapped out further in the following personas.
- Direct stakeholders: Include the CEO, investors, and suppliers who have a vested interest in the success of the app and its impact on the fish farm business.
- Indirect stakeholders: Include government agencies, regulatory bodies, and local communities who may be affected by the fish farm operations and the app&aph;s impact on the environment.
User Personas
We developed two user personas. Our primary user persona was based on our core stakeholders. In addition to her profile, we created an empathy map emphasizing her goals and behavior.
We initiated the mapping process with assumptions and then refined them using information gathered from user interviews.
Primary user persona profile
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Primary user persona empathy map
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Secondary user persona profile
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Interviews
Throughout the project, we conducted 9 interviews with various stakeholders to gather information and obtain feedback. Three interviews were with Clarify, our client, five were with industry users and specialists, and one was with a marine engineering professor.
First drafts
After the first interview with our client Clarify, we gained several insights that guided the creation of our first sketches. One of the key findings was that the solution's primary purpose isn't to read real-time datasets; instead, it's focused on supporting decision-making and predictions in fish farms.
Interview with Runar
Runar has worked as both an operations technician and an operations manager at a large sea-based fish farming facility for over 25 years. While the company he works for is not a client of Clarify, his expertise in the field has enabled us to gain further knowledge of the users' needs.
💡 Insights from the interview with Runar
- It is important for users to be able to choose the data that suits their role.
- It is essential to be able to input the normal values for each facility.
- Operations technicians must complete numerous registrations at fixed times each day.
- For daily operations is vital to have a quick access to environmental data, history, and biomass.
- An app should include features such as environmental data, an overview of fish cages with the number of fish, size, and biomass.
Iteration 1
Following the interview with Runar, we refined the initial drafts and developed the first environmental data-widgets. Given that Runar worked at a sea-based facility, all fish pens were connected to the same sensors, eliminating the need to switch between fish pens when reviewing environmental data. Considering the importance of historical information in understanding how the facility is doing, we experimented with various graph and table styles to effectively represent these data sets.
Iteration 2
We presented iteration 1 to Runar and new insight lead us to Iteration Nº2.
💡 Insights from the interview with Runar
- Not all facilities have automated sensors that are updated throughout the day. In most cases, it is registered manually.
- Other findings suggested that including symbols that indicated a trend in the datasets could be helpful.
As suggested by insights from the second interview, not all the information is updated in real-time, so we added timestamps to indicate the last update for the user. In addition, we decided to keep the symbols that indicated a trend in the datasets
Iteration 3
We presented iteration 2 to Runar and his boss. The interaction between them gave us new insights lead us to Iteration Nº3.
💡 Insights from the interview with Runar and his boss
- Oxygen and temperature significantly impact fish welfare, making them equally important factors to monitor.
- They expressed a preference for displaying oxygen levels in both percentage and millimetres.
- It will be helpful to view recent oxygen and temperature history for the past few hours.
- The most crucial biological data measurement is density, as it's illegal to have more than 25 kg of fish per cubic meter in the fish pens.
- Having feeding information within a widget is valuable.
- Real-time measurements are not critical. Receiving updates every 30 minutes or every hour is sufficient.
With this new insight we decided to:
- Consolidate the most critical environmental data into a single widget and create two additional widgets for biomass and feeding.
- Focus on the biomass and feeding datasets.
- Experiment with various measuring units and visualization methods for the dataset history.
Iteration 4
We presented iteration 3 to a professor of the Department of Marine Engineering at NTNU. The professor enthusiastically endorsed the widgets, highlighting their potential to revolutionize how data is accessed and utilized.
💡 Insights from the interview with NTNU professor.
✅ Positive feedback
- He liked that widgets show the most recent history with graphs.
- He liked the Inclusion of trend data/indicators.
- He agreed that feeding is of interest to both managers and technicians.
- Including temperature and oxygen information for each fish pen is essential.
📌 Constructive feedback:
- Real-time sensor data is more useful than estimated data when displayed in a widget intended to create situational awareness.
- Widgets can help you decide if you need more information for a situation or if it's non-critical and will resolve on its own. Including notifications in widgets is useful.
- Density, biomass and weight is hard to estimate.
- Is crucial to include external conditions such as underwater currents, waves, and wind.
- Customization of both widget/dashboard thresholds and setup is necessary.
We also received feedback from two industry professionals with extensive knowledge and expertise in the aquaculture industry. One is a water quality specialist, and the other is an operational technician. Both interviewees have a strong understanding of the Clarify application and use it regularly as part of their daily work.
💡 Insights from the interview with Industry professionals and Clarify clients.
- Focus on tank-specific measurements due to varying fish sizes and harvesting times.
- Prioritize density, average weight, and the number of fish in each tank; biomass is less important.
- For feeders, provide a quick overview of recent feeding, the amount of dead fish, and tank temperatures.
- Include mortality and average weight in a Level 1 widget.
- Highlight Specific Feeding Rate (SFR) over Feeding Factor (FCR).
- Display the last six hours of data in widgets for quick insights; for more in-depth info, use the app.
- Include batch numbers on the widgets.
- Allow users to arrange tanks in a custom order for efficient navigation.
With these new insights, the main changes we made are as follows:
- Split environmental data into separate widgets, with a focus on oxygen and temperature.
- Included oxygen in milliliters and as a percentage.
- Added a progress bar to the density dataset.
- Removed alerts, as they are not as useful for non-up-to-date data.
- Removed mortality data and placed greater emphasis on the density of the fish pens.
- Allow arrange tanks in a custom order.
- Customized biology data widget for land-based aquaculture with tank and batch numbers.
- Shifted focus from biomass to density and mortality.
- Introduced recent history for mortality and a trend indicator.
- Replaced Feeding conversion ratio (FCR) with Specific feeding rate (SFR) and included a trend indicator.
- Prioritized temperature as the primary environmental data.
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Definition
UI references and inspiration
Before proceeding to the final prototyping phase, we familiarized ourselves with widget guidelines and gathered examples to ensure design consistency
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App Concept
We also designed a ‘Dashboard’ page in the existing App. It house all the widgets we created. In this concept, users can swipe through different fish pens, similar to a weather app.
High Fidelity Prototypes
The final designs consist of three different types of widgets that display distinct sets of data: Biology data, feeding data, and environmental data. Additionally, each widget offers three designs or levels that users can choose to add to their home screen based on their needs. Level one displays the most essential information, while levels two and three provide more details.
Biology data
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Feeding data
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Environmental data
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Phone home screen with the widgets
Widgets in the App
Take Away!
- This project was presented at NTNU University for the Information Visualization course, receiving the highest grade, an A.
- Our client, Clarify, was pleased with the solution and the work carried out during the period.
- One of the biggest challenges of the project revolved around information hierarchy. Not all users shared the same perspective, and the needs differed between land-based and sea-based fish farming professionals. We addressed this by enhancing information customization. This was achieved by implementing three levels of widgets and the ability to select which widgets to display.
- We also encountered challenges such as time constraints and industry complexities, but we were able to overcome them through teamwork, gaining valuable lessons in communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.