Digitalising agriculture: design and development of a modelling web environment for end-users

Mannari C., Anichini E., Malizia A., Turchi T., Ferrari A., Bacco M.

Digital agriculture  Process modeling  Visual languages  End-user development  Living labs 

Modern digital technologies have a promising potential in the development of sustainable agriculture. For example, cloud computers powered by 5G IoT components allow the development of sophisticated applications -- e.g., for food traceability, pest detection, automatic irrigation -- also making use of different AI-based techniques. At the same time, digitalisation in agriculture is considered a socio-technical process to be evaluated by different stakeholders through collaborative approaches. Model-based requirements engineering strategies, which leverage diagrammatic notations, can support information exchange between different domains. Based on the evaluation of different solutions, we found a lack of tools for designing and modelling systems accessible to end-users. Most professional tools are desktop applications based on complex interactions, limited user experience, or generalist web platforms needing more formal components. In our study, we developed a prototype of a web environment for modelling systems based on a visual language that can be exported into standard code. We aim to involve end-users in modelling their digital ecosystems as a preliminary task for developing further applications. The prototype was evaluated in a workshop with experts following the cognitive walkthrough methodology for usability inspection. The evaluation highlighted the UI requirements to support easy-to-understand visual elements and maximise the understanding of actions while limiting user errors.

Source: VL/HCC 2023 - IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, Washington, DC, USA, 2-6/10/2023