Context
The Knowledge Gap
Core finance features had shipped — but the team building them had never deeply understood who was using them.
FBN had launched core finance features, but the team lacked a grounded understanding of who our farmers actually were. We didn't know their goals, their frustrations, or how they thought about borrowing — and without that, product and design decisions were being made on assumption.
To close that gap, we partnered with a UX researcher to conduct generative research across 17 farmers in key agricultural regions, combining on-farm interviews, remote sessions, and focus groups at the Farmer-2-Farmer conference.
Research Process
My Role in the Research
I worked alongside the UX researcher throughout, contributing as the design voice in three key moments:
Kick-off Workshops — Co-facilitated sessions to surface knowledge gaps and align product, design, business, and marketing on research priorities.
Fieldwork & Interviews — Traveled to the Midwest to conduct on-farm interviews directly alongside the UX researcher — sitting with farmers in their homes and fields to hear firsthand how they thought about borrowing and managing their operations.
Synthesis & Naming — After compiling themes with the researcher, I facilitated a workshop where stakeholders collaboratively named each archetype using dot voting — turning raw data into something the whole team could own.
Driving to a customer's farm in Kansas for the interview
It was feeding time right after an interview, and the farmer asked if we wanted to feed the lamb!
The awesome team that helped with focus groups during the conference
Why archetypes, not personas?
In the finance space, what farmers do and want matters more than who they are demographically. Archetypes let us focus on shared behaviors and decision-making patterns — a more actionable foundation for design and product.
Meet the Archetypes
Meet the Archetypes
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✦ These archetypes became the shared language across product, design, and marketing — and the direct input for our design roadmap.
Design
From Research to Roadmap
The archetypes directly shaped three design outcomes — each one addressing a pattern we heard consistently across our farmer conversations.
1. Enable Easier Access to Funds
Research finding — Across all four archetypes, farmers were frustrated by how slow the operating line process was — especially in time-sensitive moments like cattle auctions or co-op discounts. Waiting days to access funds meant missing opportunities.
What we designed — We digitized the bank account linkage and fund request process, eliminating DocuSign entirely. Farmers can now link their bank account in under 3 minutes and request draws anytime through the app.
Setting up Direct Deposit
A DocuSign is emailed to the farmer and the loan team needs to manually verify the bank info — takes up to 5 business days.
Farmer can link their bank account on the FBN app in under 3 minutes.
Requesting Draws
Farmer needs to fill out a DocuSign every time they need access to funds, and the loan team needs to manually review it — often processed late during the busy season.
Farmer can now request draws through the app using a simplified digital form, anytime and anywhere.
✦ Reduced fund access time from 5 business days to 2.
2. Digital Payment Capability
Research finding — Paper check repayment was causing real financial harm. Lost checks went unnoticed for over a week. Inaccurate amounts meant back-and-forth corrections. Farmers were mailing multiple smaller checks just to avoid the anxiety of sending one large one.
What we designed — Using FBN's existing Stripe integration, I designed a digital payment flow that replaced the paper check process entirely — prioritizing simplicity, security, and real-time feedback so farmers could pay with confidence from anywhere.
✦ Payment processing reduced to 1 business day.
3. Highlighting Agricultural Expertise
Research finding — Three of our four archetypes expressed hesitation about working with lenders who didn't understand agriculture — specifically around challenges like weather-related delays affecting repayments. They trusted and preferred lenders who understood their world.
What we designed — Working with marketing, we surfaced FBN's agricultural expertise directly on the financing pages and created a dedicated loan team page where farmers could find and connect with their specific loan advisor — building trust from the very first touchpoint.
✦ Built early trust in the lending process, reinforcing FBN's positioning as an agriculture-first lender.