Farmica

About the project

Farmica is a farm order management platform designed for direct sellers who regularly take orders through WhatsApp, phone calls, SMS, Facebook, and email. The goal was to replace fragmented and manual order collection with a simple workflow that allows farmers to publish their weekly offer, collect orders online, and manage fulfilment from a single place.

My role covered product strategy, user research, UX design, prototyping, interface design, and development of the platform.

Goal

The objective was to create a system that simplifies weekly order management for small and medium-sized farms without adding technical complexity.

Many existing e-commerce solutions are too complicated for direct sellers whose business revolves around seasonal products, collection days, and recurring customers. Farmica needed to feel approachable, require minimal setup, and support the natural workflow farmers already use.

Success would mean reducing administrative work, preventing order mistakes, and saving time every week.

Process

The project started with understanding how direct sellers currently manage orders. Through conversations with potential users, it became clear that most orders arrived through several different channels, forcing farmers to manually consolidate information before each collection or delivery day.

Before writing any code, I mapped the complete order lifecycle from publishing products to preparing orders for collection. Based on these insights, I created interactive prototypes in Figma to test the proposed workflow with real users.

The prototype phase focused on validating key assumptions:

• Can farmers create and manage a weekly offer without training?
• Can customers place orders without creating an account?
• Is the order management workflow intuitive enough to replace spreadsheets and handwritten notes?
• What information is most important before collection and delivery days?

Feedback from testing led to several iterations and simplifications before development began. The goal was not to add features, but to remove unnecessary complexity wherever possible.

The final platform includes:

• Weekly product management
• Customer ordering without registration
• Inventory and availability controls
• Pick-up location and delivery management
• Centralised order overview
• Packing list generation
• CSV exports
• Automated customer notifications
• Production and inventory tracking for larger farms

Throughout the project, every design decision was evaluated against a single principle: saving farmers time.

Result

The result is a purpose-built platform that mirrors the real workflow of direct sellers rather than forcing them to adapt to traditional e-commerce software.

Farmers can publish their weekly offer in minutes, customers can order without friction, and all order information is automatically organised in one place. Tasks that previously required spreadsheets, notes, and manual coordination are now handled through a streamlined workflow.

The platform provides a foundation that can support both small family farms and larger direct-selling operations while remaining simple enough for first-time users.

Reflection

This project reinforced the value of validating ideas before development. User testing with interactive prototypes helped uncover friction points early and prevented unnecessary complexity from making its way into the final product.

One of the most important lessons was that good product design is often about reducing functionality rather than adding it. By focusing on the essential weekly workflow of direct sellers, Farmica became easier to understand, easier to adopt, and ultimately more useful for its target audience.