Spensa Technologies and DTN
Spensa Technologies was an innovative agricultural technology company based in the Purdue Research Park where I worked as a designer from October 2015 until the company was acquired in March 2018 by DTN. My primary role was to plan, design, and help build the user interfaces for the company's web-based and mobile-based software, particularly the Spensa Agronomic Platform (AP) which I contributed to throughout its development:
- Helping define product goals;
- Conducting market research and competitive analyses;
- Conducting both remote and on-site user interviews;
- Iterating on designs, from early sketches through low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity interactive mockups in Adobe XD;
- Assisting the developers coding the UI;
- Doing cross-platform testing.
I also designed, built, and helped maintain Spensa's marketing website, wrote product documentation, and supported various company projects with graphic design and illustration work, including infographics, posters, logos, and tradeshow materials.
Since the acquisition I've acted as a UIUX specialist with DTN, a Minnesota-based company that deals in data analysis and insights for weather, ag, energy, and commodity markets.
Spensatech.com marketing website
Designing and coding Spensa's main website was an enjoyable project that had some challenging wrinkles, like figuring out how to animate the SVG data elements in the hero zone and revealing the stacked app screens on scroll.
Spensa UI sketches
Doing quick, pencil-and-paper sketches like these for interface design concepts helped me get immediate feedback on ideas allowed for rapid iteration before moving on to more structured mockups. The interfaces shown here are for managing agricultural field data.
Scouting application
Reviewing a field scouting trip in AP, and agricultural and farm-management app. The interface indicates the path of the scout through the field and shows the observations they made along the way.
Spensa AP screen
This early concept piece illustrated how the company's orange branding colors could be applied throughout the application.
Interactive XD mockup
Part of a complex, web-based application for managing agricultural chemicals, which I designed and mocked up using Adobe XD.
Wireframing in XD and Miro
Wireframing an app in XD (above) and Miro (below). I like XD for precise/detailed modeling and for interactive demonstrations of flows, while Miro is better suited to quick, collaborative work.
High-fidelity mobile mockups
High-fidelity mockups of application concepts are sometimes needed to help clients better understand how a potential product might look and operate. I created these for an agronomic mobile app being developed for an agribusiness company.
