SIRADU: a rice quality app for farmers in Central Java

SIRADU is an Android app for rice farmers and distributors in Central Java, made in a 2022 research project funded by the Ministry of Research's Basic Beginner Research grant. I designed the app and helped build it, working with two lecturers, Diovianto Putra Rakhmadani and Gita Fadila Fitriana, and fellow student Tsabitatul Iffah. The paper was published in JATISI in September 2022.

The problem

Indonesia grows more rice than almost anyone, but quality hasn't kept up with quantity. From January to July 2021, the country imported 242.9 thousand tons of quality rice, worth US$110.2 million, because local rice was seen as worse. Keeping quality up means watching it all the way from the farmer to the distributor.

What the app does

• Plant diseases. A database of rice plant diseases and how to treat them, plus news on pests.
• A planting calendar. The weather, and which days are good for planting.
• Quality grading. Sorts rice into the four grades of Indonesia's national rice standard, from premium to medium III, using measures like milling degree, moisture, and broken grains.
• Distribution. Supply and demand between farmers and distributors, by quality grade.

What I did

• UI and UX. The screens and flows, from signing up with a one-time code to the home screen, the planting calendar, and the profile.
• Development. Part of building the Android app.

The team worked with Feature-Driven Development: an overall model first, then a feature list, then planning, design, and building one feature at a time. It suited an app whose users, farmers and distributors, need very different things.

Testing

Twenty farmers in Central Java, aged 25 to 55, rated the prototype with the System Usability Scale. Their scores averaged about 71, which counts as good, ranging from 52.5 to 92.5. The paper also notes that some features still needed work.

The paper is in Indonesian, with an English abstract: read it on JATISI.