Herd management system
A concept design for a complex platform that helps farmers manage herd health, fertility, and milking tasks. The system integrates with Afimilk’s hardware to collect animal data and provide actionable insights, such as detecting animals in distress or fertility windows, essential for managing large farms efficiently.
Here is a small preview of before and after from the beta version :
Afimilk
Lead Product Designer
Methods
User research, personas, information architecture, prototyping, usability testing, visual system
Agri-tech
Overview
Afimilk’s herd-management platform is used by dairy farms around the world to track every animal’s health, fertility and milking data. As lead designer I ran a concept redesign of the beta app: research with farmers, a restructured information architecture and a new visual system, delivered as a Figma prototype and pitch deck.
Challenge
The cluttered interface made navigation and access to essential features frustrating. Onboarding lacked clarity, which kept new-user adoption low. And the existing design system wasn’t built to handle the growing volume and complexity of data, creating both usability and scalability problems.
Solution
We began by diving deep into user behavior through interviews, surveys, and analytics, uncovering key pain points and opportunities. This informed a complete overhaul of the app’s structure, streamlining navigation and prioritizing user needs.
We moved from low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity prototypes, constantly refining the design based on user feedback. Usability testing revealed areas for improvement, which we quickly addressed, ensuring a seamless and intuitive experience.
With a focus on clarity and consistency, we crafted a cohesive visual system—harmonizing typography, color, and iconography—while creating a style guide for future scalability. This iterative approach ensured the interface was not only clean and efficient but also aligned with both user expectations and business goals, delivering a truly refined product.
Who we designed for
We tested in person and remotely with farmers around the world who use Afimilk products. One of the two personas that came out of that research:
Israeli farmer: hands-on, fast decision-making
Farm type: medium-sized dairy farm, often family-run.
Pain points
Needs quick data access while actively managing livestock
Works in a fast-paced, hands-on environment
Little time for deep analysis; wants actionable insights fast
Design takeaways
Prioritised a dashboard with quick, real-time insights
Minimised clicks by reducing navigation steps
Used colour-coded alerts for fast decision-making
Key changes
Header: The original header was cluttered, with an oversized white space and a commercial banner that testing revealed to be ineffective and unnecessary.
In the redesigned version, the banner was removed, and actions were simplified into clean, elegant icons, maximizing space and improving usability. This change created a more focused and efficient interface for users.
Table: The original table was small and cluttered, making it difficult to display and understand information.
By removing unnecessary gradients and graphic boxes, we freed up space to create a larger, clean, and data-oriented table.
The redesigned table features ample white space, making the data easier to digest and significantly improving readability and usability.
Calendar: The original design featured a large, cluttered monthly calendar that testing and field research revealed did not match farmers’ needs. Farmers primarily required a clear, focused view of tasks for the upcoming week. The new design replaced the monthly view with a streamlined weekly calendar, improving usability and aligning with real-world workflows.
Color Simplification: The old design relied heavily on color-coded tasks, which testing showed to be confusing and unnecessary.
In the redesign, we removed the redundant task colors and introduced bright, informative highlights for critical information.
This change made the system more accessible, reducing visual noise and improving clarity for users.
Outcome
The Afimilk Herd Management system redesign successfully addressed the usability issues, resulting in a more intuitive and user-friendly experience. The improved UX/UI design led to increased user adoption, engagement, and satisfaction, demonstrating the value of a well-designed template for UX designers.
By simplifying the design we were able to keep the data in the right hierarchy and make it easier to understand by adding high-contrast colors, a white clean background, and dark Typography.
What we learned
Designing for people who work with their hands taught me to measure every screen by how fast it gets someone back to the herd. The research with farmers mattered more than any visual decision: once the hierarchy matched how they actually make decisions, the interface could afford to be simple. I also learned that a style guide is the real deliverable in a concept project, because it is what lets a team keep the quality after the designer leaves.