APLICACIÓN DEL TRATAMIENTO O PROCEDIMIENTO

• It didn’t suggest BG control. He knows what he wants to use and he would rather put that in to see what the results were.(6)

• It was most confusing and the least helpful aspect of the system for him. It took 3 or 4 minutes to optimise. Wasn’t really clear what he was getting. Couldn’t tell which treatment was which on the in season screen. The tractor does not say what was being done. Didn’t want to move them as he didn’t know which was which.(15)

Cultivations

• Thought this was not an important aspect. Cultivations are currently discussed but this is not always what the farmer does. Sometimes you just have to plough. (9)

Encyclopaedia

• It didn’t really make him think at all. (2)

Decision Support

• This is possibly because he has to get used to using it. Found difficulty navigating the decision process e.g. adding observations. Results didn’t feature what he thought they would. (10)

Yield loss bars

• It may be useful when persuading a farmer to do something, not really useful though. Nice that its there though. (11)

Spray Nozzle selector

• He has never got into it with his clients before, so he can’t see himself doing it in the future. Not part of his job to a great extent. (12)

Add Observations

• It was quite limited. Found the ranges for densities and cover hard to fit into what he was thinking about. Hard to change what you actually see in the field into numbers. (14)

Chemical list

• It is not as up to date with what there is available at the moment and there are not enough chemicals in it (18)

2.4.3 On a scale of 1-5, 1 being very useful and 5 being not at all useful, how useful did you find the suggest treatments screen and why?

Figure 7: Showing the usefulness of the suggest treatments screen (1 = very useful & 5 = not at all useful)

A total of 18 participants answered this question. Figure 7 above shows how useful the users felt the suggest treatments screen was on a scale of 1 to 5. Just under half of the respondents felt that the suggest treatments screen was either useful or very useful (7/18 or 39%) and a similar number were undecided (8/18 or 44%). Three people (17%) felt that the screen was either not useful or not at all useful.

Some of the comments users made in relation to this question.

Respondents were asked to comment on their responses to this question and these have been summarised below.

Positive comments

The most frequent positive comments related to the way that the output from the suggest treatments could be used as a way to enhance the users own decision making i.e. by suggesting things that they hadn’t thought of or by kick-starting the thinking process. Specific comments are listed below:

It made you think

• Thought it gave valuable information that made you think about what you were doing as it was different than what you would expect. (2)

• Found it interesting. May suggest something you hadn’t thought of before. Interesting more than useful. It gives too many options. (3)

• Use to be an agronomist but has lost touch so she found it useful. She had her ideas and then looked through to see what it came up with. (7)

Range of options given

• It gave a broad range of options to treat the problem. (8)

• Self evident. It does what you want it to do. Feels it may come up with too many options. From a practical point of view how many do you really need. (11)

User friendliness

• I thought the screen was ok (1)

• Found it ok. It was quite clear. Because it was ok he can’t really remember much about it (4)

Gives an excellent starting point

• It gives you an excellent starting point for what you’re planning. (12)

Liked the gross margin feature

• I like the fact that you can see you are changing gross margin so quite good. (14)

0 2 4 6 8 No of users 1 2 3 4 5

Very useful <---> Very un-useful

31

Negative comments

There were quite a number of negative comments in relation to the Suggest Treatments screen. These mostly concerned the users unhappiness with the way that chemicals were used within the system (too few) and problems with running it. Other comments suggested a lack of trust in the model output. Specific comments are listed below:

Product/cultivation related comments

• Need more chemicals. (3)

• Not useful as its dealing with a very limited database. Would like to suggest the products he wants to work with. He would give it a 2 or 1 if it could be improved in that way (6)

• It didn’t take into consideration reduced rated. It was only full rates you could use. This would put him off using it. (9)

• Would like to see as many chemicals as possible in the list. Defaults will do, don’t need all IPUs. (11)

• He options are fairly narrow in terms of tank mixes and product choice. In reality he has a massive tool kit to use but only a small portion of that is available here. (13)

• Needs to have as many pesticide options as possible. Full range out there should be in here. There are cheaper older products out there. It is very limited at the moment, though this wouldn’t stop him using it but would be more useful with more. (16)

• Wants an option at start of program you should have a tick box where you can say don’t include plough. (17)

Problems getting it to work

• Didn’t look at it as a solution mainly due to the treatments that came up. He would mainly just use this for more difficult decisions to see what came up. Not getting anything useful out of it at the moment (1)

• Every time he’s tried to use it he didn’t get any results.(5)

• Not obvious where he should go or what he should do. Doesn’t say what the process is. A wizard would be good (10)

• Very slow on his machine so it was frustrating. It was fairly clear when it actually suggested them. His computer is just too slow and not really up to the challenge of running it. Could have been more helpful. He could see there were differences in yield, because the cultivations came first that’s all he could see. Should highlight the differences between them easily. Didn’t know to click on double bar. Doesn’t want cultivations first. (15)

• It didn’t work for him. The only thing it suggested was Mouldbough plough. Would have given it a 4 if it had worked. Note: went over the process with the user while on the phone and it suggested feasible treatments for the first time. (17)

Lack of trust/belief in outcomes

• Didn’t trust everything it told him to do. (8)

• Doesn’t really change your yield as in bring it up. Found it hard to have an impact on the yield. Didn’t seem to go up the more money you spent. (14)

• When shown at HGCA thought it was BG oriented and that affected the financial figures as you had to spend more money to control BG. Could be the examples he was given as they all had BG so that’s maybe why he feels it. (16)

Output too general

• Didn’t find it very useful at all. Because it is generally the case that she has certain things that she would do for each individual farm. It just gives you an overview rather than a specific answer. There are lots of other things that influence her decisions for each farm. (18)