Farm Credit Services of America
Designing an admin interface and a lead capture page for FCSA's new digital initiative.
Role: UX Design Intern
Date: June 2022 - September 2022
Designing an admin interface and a lead capture page for FCSA's new digital initiative.
Role: UX Design Intern
Date: June 2022 - September 2022
I completed a summer UX internship with Farm Credit Services of America, during which I had the opportunity to take part in two projects. Farm Credit Services of America provides financial services to farmers and ranchers through offering loans, leasing, and other services. FCSA runs Farmlend, an online service that provides access to financing programs. I worked on two projects for Farmlend: an admin interface for managing hundreds of property listings, and a lead-generating page on the Farmlend website.
My first project involved designing an admin interface for Property Search. Property Search was a new tool in Farmlend for customers to find farmland that is on sale or auction. In order to show these property listings, admin needed to be able to create each one and keep the listings up to date. I was in charge of designing the form for creating listings and designing the dashboard that would allow admin to track all of them.
Property Search on Farmlend
Research
With the list of data types needed to populate a property listing already available, I began by designing the Create New Listing form. Each listing contains information such as the address, real estate agency contact details, and other things helpful for farmers and ranchers to know such as soil information. I sorted the data into 3 categories - general sale information, real estate partner information, and property information. This grouping allowed for the form to cleanly be broken into 3+ pages to accommodate for the 20+ data fields.
Other considerations in designing the form included determining how the flow would differ for a sale listing vs an auction listing. Both types of listings have common data fields, but properties that are up for auction will have unique information such as the auction date and auction details, while properties that are for sale will include information such as sale status and listing price. These unique data fields fell under the general sale information category, which would be ordered first, leading me to establish the flow by setting the form’s first question to be whether the listing is for sale or auction.
Working on the dashboard, I determined data that would be helpful when searching for specific properties - information such as address, real estate partner, and type of sale. I additionally honed in on a set of filters that would help further narrow down the search for a property and enable admin to manage a listing.
Understanding sale vs auction data fields and an initial dashboard sketch
Drawing on Farmlend's design system, I finished developing the first prototype then continued to iterate on the designs in response to feedback. This admin interface was meant for internal use and I had access to the people who would be using this product, which enabled me to directly work with them to optimize the design.
From discussions with them and other shareholders, I introduced two key changes along with smaller improvements: making the multi-page form a single long form to enable information to be quickly entered and adding a module containing functions for changing the property listing.
Page-Long Form
The initial multi-page form was modified to a single page after consulting with the future users, who shared feedback about how not needing to click through multiple buttons to complete the form would accelerate the process of creating the property listing and feel quicker. To account for this change and still provide some structure to the form, a navigation sidebar was added to allow users to jump to sections as needed.
Publishing Menu
In addition, a module for publishing and tracking changes was added. We realized that there was a need for users to have the ability to track updates, archive the listing, and save changes. This module was created as a result. With this menu, users would be able to save progress on the form before publishing, archive a property to make it inactive after its sell or auction date, and see when the form was last updated.
Other smaller changes were also made to the Create Listing form, such as implementing a way for admin to order their uploaded photos according to the real estate partner’s preference and set a featured image for thumbnails. Meanwhile, data fields such as Section Township and Range, used for locating areas of land, led me to research the best way to format this type of information in a form.
Publishing module for making changes to listing
Left: Image upload and ordering; Right: User view
Left: Various formats for entering Section Township and Range; Right: My design for the form
My initial prototype for the admin dashboard did not undergo many changes as we went through the development process. The dashboard, consisting of all the properties organized in a list view and a set of filters to find a specific property, was relatively straightforward compared to design for the Create Listing form. Revisions for the dashboard included adding status icons to signify incomplete listings, and removing columns for information that wasn't necessary when it came to locating a certain property.
After a few weeks designing for this project, I moved on to work for Equipment and Machinery. Throughout the duration of my internship after I finished the final prototype, I continued to work with the Property Search development team to assist on implementation of the interface.
After designing for Property Search, my next project involved creating a product page on the customer-facing Farmlend site for Equipment and Machinery, one of Farmlend’s new product offerings. This service offers equipment financing for dealership, auction, and private party purchases. My duties involved creating a mockup for the lead capture page, designing application pages for the service and working with stakeholders to bring and adapt equipment financing into Farmlend from an existing FCSA program.
Equipment and Machinery on Farmlend
When I began work on Equipment and Machinery, this project was in the early stages of development. This project was very similar to AgDirect, an existing FCSA program that also offers equipment financing but was run in partnership with other Farm Credit associations. Discussions revolved around adding the service to the Farmlend brand as an alternative and not a direct replacement to AgDirect, which is able to serve a wider geographic range of customers. I spoke with stakeholders to learn more about AgDirect and determine what information we could show users on the marketing page.
After gaining a clearer understanding of our constraints, I collaborated with the UX strategist on our team to work through a vision for the Farmlend site and establish a common structure that could be used across the different services’ product pages to unify them under a single brand. We wanted to feature similar types of content in each product page such as application process details, FAQs, and call-to-actions.
I began UI work on the product page after the framework was established, starting with sections such as the hero section, application process, and FAQs. I then focused on designing a section unique to Equipment and Machinery that provides an overview of options for equipment financing depending on how the purchase occurred. There are three types: purchases through auction, private party, or dealership that have different rates and terms for financing. I wanted to include a section on the page to distinguish these types and show more specific information according to each one. I designed a tabbed view with each tab including a short description of the financing type and a dropdown that expands to a table with the rates and terms, and detailed requirements about what is needed to complete the application process and receive funds.
I also drafted mockups for the confirmation page that appears after users complete their equipment financing application. At that point, the application confirmation page for Farmlend’s only service consisted of simple text containing the summary and next steps. The team was considering a redesign of a more universal confirmation page that could also cross-sell the other services. I experimented with several formats with the goal of drawing visibility to the offerings. Feedback indicated a preference for the format advertising other services on the side.
I continued to refine designs for the product page and confirmation page, adjusting UI elements when coming across technical constraints and making content changes as the team progressed on adapting equipment financing from AgDirect.
Mockup for financing options section
Various formats for application confirmation page
I designed for Equipment and Machinery until the end of my internship. When I left, work on this product was still in development and the service had not yet released. Since then, Equipment and Machinery has been made available to Farmlend customers.
I had an incredible time at FCSA expanding my UX skills and working as part of a larger team to bring a product to reality. I came away from this experience having learned so much from the UX team and others that I collaborated with, and am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to two projects for Farmlend.