At this stage, the biggest unknown was not the interface itself. The bigger question was how dairy farms actually make decisions and how AI detections could fit into daily operations.
I used research to understand the farm as an operating system: who notices problems, who is responsible for reacting, what data people trust, and what context they need before taking action.
I started by analyzing existing farm management systems, monitoring tools, and agricultural BI products to understand common workflows, reporting patterns, and information architecture.
Then I conducted field research on a real dairy farms (>800 lactating cows). I observed feeding routines, animal movement, communication between roles, and how decisions were made during the day.
The goal was not to create abstract personas. It was to define the product logic: which situations should become alerts, what level of detail users need, and how the system should connect farm-level analytics with group, cow, and operational workflows.