Brazilian farmers are encouraged by the government to sell their products through purchase bids, directed to public sector institutions. However, during the covid pandemic, these farmers found themselves in a tough situation: with countless institutions in lockdown, their products sales decreased exponentially.

With this scenery in mind, Conexsus started an initiative called Negócios Pela Terra (translated as Business Across the Land). The main goal of NpT is to enable these farmers connect to new customers, so they don’t need to count uniquely with purchases made by the government.

My engagement with NpT started while I was working for Hackingbrands, but different than what I saw on Onswell, I was onboarded to a project which already had many discussions going on, and Conexsus even hired a designer dedicated to NpT previously. So I had a long onboarding process to follow up their discussions and fully understand what NpT was about, and what was created so far.

During this project, I had one of the most challenging, yet significant work. It was clear that Conexus was trying to solve a social issue and supporting farmers who had a strong compromise with ethics and the environment. On top of that, I took this chance to grab the previous prototypes created and, after update its style guide, categorize it into a design system.
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Throughout six months, I was able to work on every UI design aspect of the project. Rafael Queiroz, from Hackingbrands, also encouraged me to engage in UX discussions so we could

tackle multiple problems together, and at the same time propose an outstanding experience for our users.

A strong visual design mindset was required for NpT, since we needed to go over all the screen previously made, review each one of them, and proposed a new idea on how to approach the product’s UI. Colors and typography family were kept, but applied in a beautiful and balanced way. Analyze the previous screens allowed me to stablish patterns, split them into smaller sections so we could use them on the new screens.

The creation of a design system for NpT happened in parallel with the creation of new interactions, so I could design and test components on the way. When they were good enough, became part of the library documented for the rest of the team.

Different than our expectations, in many cases the components become outdated, or as we scale up the system, they tend to be substituted by a different type of interaction. This balance between previous and new versions, as well as the functioning of the UI were responsibilities I had, always conciliating the feedbacks received.
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My role in Negócios Pela Terra allowed me to grow and improve my professional skills, and there is a huge satisfaction in seeing the design being implemented by developers. We knew this project had a purpose, and with shared this sense of commitment to it. Our efforts resulted in a system where now farmers can register, sell and deliver their products to a digitally connected community.