Tag Archives: user experience

The Tools I Want, Where I Want

That’s just what you’ll get on the Dashboard we’re building for NEWA. “The Tools I Want, Where I Want” on the Home page’s center will invite you to login and create a profile for your NEWA Dashboard. Here’s a quick video about our project with an introduction to the Dashboard. What’s new with NEWA? https://youtu.be/sL2p4AgWe98

We’ve been busy — building a responsive NEWA website with improved weather data quality from the 729 weather stations that share data in 25 states for our crop and IPM tools. Our new platform will shrink down beautifully on your phone and expand out on your desktop to give you easy-to-access, accurate tools for IPM decision-making.

Place-based extension resources and logos will provide partner credit and give you the experience of being in your own university’s setting. Each weather station location will acknowledge those who provide data to NEWA, yes, all 729 of them, and as many more as decide to plug in to NEWA.

Screenshot picture of the NEWA Dashboard, sized for a phone.

The Favorite station info on my NEWA Dashboard, sized for a phone.

A Stakeholder Innovation Workshop identified areas of need and set the stage for prioritizing NEWA’s content. One-on-one user experience (UX) research informed NEWA’s design. Our project advisory panel — producers, faculty, Extension specialists, state partners, and weather station owners — contributed advice on UX, architecture, design, functionality, and ADA compliance to heighten your experience when interacting with the responsive NEWA decision support system.

NEWA’s improved data handling will boost speed and enhance capacity to build more tools. The National Digital Forecast gridded data are being integrated as a backup data source for weather stations that fail to report data. Inclusion of these data greatly improves the reliability and loading speed of the NEWA tools.

When you have a Dashboard, your trap catch dates, and and other stuff used by NEWA’s tools, will be saved for the weather station location. You won’t have to enter this over and over and over again.

Prefer open access? NEWA Home now serves weather data from the weather station closest to your location, automatically, with an interactive map of NEWA weather stations. Two landing pages, Weather Tools and Crop & IPM Tools, buoy simplified navigation.

NEWA’s models have been modernized via a common model template fostering tool development. Drive the tools with left or button menus: station selection, date of interest, toggle on/off tool elements. Tool elements are grouped in user input, management guide, results table, results graph, and environmental variables table. You can download tool data (CSV) and graphs ( PNG).

Beta testers unanimously praise design and navigation. We are now building out NEWA’s tools and anticipate finishing around May of 2021. NEWA version 3.0 will be launched in 2021 at newa.cornell.edu.

NEWA: Your source for weather and science-driven IPM tools.

Our Impact Statement: Increased use of digital IPM decision support systems like NEWA results in more growers making better pest management decisions with less pesticide input. NEWA’s renewed architecture now delivers geo-specific attribution for appropriate place-based extension outreach on devices as small as phones. Common building blocks used to reconstruct the 35 IPM models into responsive NEWA tools were delineated and pave the way for future growth and easy upgrades. A NEWA dashboard will display what the user wants from the locations they want: easy to set up through NEWA’s user profile. The profile backend will store essential biofix and crop information to drive fast and accurate IPM forecasts for growers. We have developed the required back-end databases and front-end design elements that will heighten positive user experiences when interacting with the responsive NEWA decision support system. To support NEWA data quality, we utilize forecast data and our weather station data editor tool to provision an accurate and reliable decision support system. Improved navigation comes via an interactive NEWA map and streamlined landing page designs that echo our user-experience research. When growers have access to reliable, weather-based, real time NEWA models, IPM practices increase on the farm, preventing plant disease, insect, and crop loss, reducing unnecessary inputs, and minimizing health, economic and environmental risks.

This post was contributed by Juliet Carroll, Fruit IPM Coordinator and past NEWA leader. Contact her at jec3@cornell.edu

The 2017 NEWA survey: current and potential users

This is part two in a five-part blog series discussing 2017 NEWA survey results of users and non-users. Download the full report to learn more.

By Dan Olmstead and Julie Carroll

Who uses NEWA?

75% of all NEWA users are growers and 10% are extension educators. Of the growers, 60% manage diversified farm operations. The size of their farms ranged mostly from 11 to 1000 acres (57% of respondents), with a small proportion (4%) managing farms greater than 1000 acres, and 20% farming 2 to 10 acres. Among non-users, the majority of respondents (44%) farmed less than 10 acres.

What do NEWA users produce?

Most NEWA users surveyed grow apples (46%); other tree fruit (37%); grapes (34%); berries (25%); and tomatoes (25%). A majority produce two or more commodities; 23 other commodities not supported by commodity-specific NEWA tools were reported by NEWA users (Table 1).

NEWA currently provides fruit and vegetable tools, whereas the survey results show users produce other commodities. Therefore, additional NEWA tools for field crops, livestock and ornamentals are needed, as well as for other fruit and vegetables not covered. Users who manage diversified operations will benefit from NEWA tools in these production areas and an interface that displays the results for several models simultaneously.

Future growth opportunities

Of the 331 survey respondents, 151 do not use NEWA. A majority (59%) of non-users indicated a lack of awareness when asked why they don’t use NEWA. Another 25% responded by saying they don’t know how to use NEWA. Coordinated effort to increase NEWA awareness is needed. Educational resources, workshops, and presentations would help recruit NEWA users who could benefit from its impact on improving their IPM practices.

Geographic representation

Up next: NEWA IPM impact

The 2017 NEWA user survey: understanding grower impact, needs, and priorities

This is part one in a five-part blog series discussing 2017 NEWA survey results of users and non-users. Download the full report to learn more.

By Dan Olmstead and Julie Carroll

Survey background and justification

NEWA is an online decision aid system providing fruit and vegetable growers with IPM risk assessment model results based on local weather and forecast data. First established in 1996 by the New York State IPM Program at Cornell University with 22 weather stations, the current NEWA web platform, newa.cornell.edu, was launched in 2009; informed by a 2007 survey of NEWA users and non-users.

The success of the NEWA platform paved the way for significant expansion in the ensuing 10 years. NEWA now includes over 650 weather stations throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Upper-Midwest US. At the time of this post, there are 14 partnering states with membership support from land-grant institutions and grower associations, including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

A 10-year follow up survey was completed in 2017 to gather NEWA user and non-user demographics, measure IPM impact, determine current and desired user needs, and assess the overall NEWA user experience. Collected data is informing a NEWA redesign planned for 2019 to best address grower preferences, capitalize on new internet technologies, accommodate mobile devices, and deliver attribution to and resources from partner states.

Survey objectives included the following:

Measure the IPM and financial impact of NEWA.
Understand the demographics of NEWA users and potential new users.
Determine the utility of current website content, desired new content, and assess user experience.

Survey implementation

Survey questions about user demographics, website content needs, and user experience were drafted by Olmstead, Carroll, and NEWA State Coordinators with final review by Cornell Survey Research Institute. To provide a 10-year perspective on NEWA’s impact, a subset of questions from the 2007 survey was repeated in the 2017 survey.

Next up: Understanding IPM impact among NEWA users