Ancera Post-Harvest Mobile App

Client
Ancera (Biotech Startup)

Role
Lead UX Designer

Duration
~1 year

Project Type
Native Mobile Application (iOS/Android)

Summary
Ancera’s Post-Harvest Application was created to help technical professionals in the food industry make high-risk decisions by providing them with the relevant, necessary data.

Users & Use Cases

Initially, the goal of Ancera’s post Harvest application was to provide FDA regulation data to production professionals such as technical services managers, account managers, and administrators.

Production professionals need to be able to make quick, high-stakes decisions about farms, factories, and food safety risks.

While leadership was correct that our users want to see how their farms are performing, there were a few irrelevant assumptions.

  1. They need to be able to personalize what they see on the app in order to make the relevant decisions.

  2. They need to see urgent alerts and relevant notifications immediately.

  3. Products don’t matter as much as identifying how to keep, grow, or gain customers.

The Problem

The challenge was that there was minimal clarity on what users actually needed, and I was expected to execute design rather than find alignment between the product vision, and actual user behavior, needs, or language. There was no real problem statement to work off of, but rather a list of features the CEO wanted to implement.

As I was working directly with the CEO, who felt he already knew what users wanted to see, I proposed introducing UX processes but he became frustrated with having his vision challenged. 

After delivering the first round of wireframes based on his assumptions, we confirmed what I suspected: the features being prioritized were “neat” but not solving real problems since we didn’t take the time to actually pinpoint user pain points. 

The Approach

Once an experienced R&D engineer transitioned into a Product Manager role, I was able to push to define a clearer product direction, grounded in how professionals in the agriculture industry actually navigate food safety, risk, and compliance decisions. The Product Manager became a great ally in repeating my words to leadership when they didn’t want to hear what I had to say, and we aligned around a more grounded, user-centered lens.

I introduced UX processes, with success, leading us in:

  • Whiteboard workshops, such as user flows and feature prioritization, to identify key user questions and feature assumptions.

  • Personas to clarify user types and goals: allied customers, facility managers, QA teams

  • Information architecture to understand what data was most important, and what were “nice to haves”.

  • Problem reframing exercises: not “What can we build?” but “What decisions are users trying to make? How can we make the decision making process easier?”

The Solution

Together, we rewrote the product vision to focus on:

“Empowering food manufacturers and their allied partners with practical microbial performance insights that support targeted intervention strategies.”

Validation & Iteration

With a clearer product vision and user lens, I began translating complex scientific and regulatory content into simplified wireframes and flows:

  • Developed IA (Information Architecture) based on persona tasks and priorities

  • Created multiple iterations of low-fidelity wireframes

  • Facilitated working sessions with the PM to validate design direction before sharing with stakeholders

Due to the complexity of Ancera’s offerings, I collaborated with a visual designer to split responsibilities. I handled:

  • UX strategy

  • UI architecture & structure

  • Data visualization

  • Interaction design decisions

  • Initial design direction

They helped immensely with executing and polishing UI design across screens after I provided them with low-fidelity mockups, allowing us to maintain speed while preserving usability and clarity. 

Though formal usability testing was deprioritized, I advocated for internal demos with stakeholders—who represented the technical professionals the app was serving. The Product Manager and I presented annotated wireframes, walking through the user flows and rationale.

These demos allowed us to gather feedback that led us to:

  • Dashboard changes: USDA/FDA alerts and industry highlights needed to be the very first thing users see on their dashboard, while product promotions can go into their own tab on the menu.

  • Facility comparison: users wanted to be able to compare microbial performance between facilities and track peer group trends.

  • Advanced search: Users wanted to be able to drill down into microbial data that matched their intervention strategies by selecting specific serotypes.

These changes helped reduce recall risk, benchmark performance, and identify facility issues proactively.

Final Product

We incorporated final feedback into a revised MVP, which launched in December 2022 with the following features:

📲 MVP Features

  • Onboarding flow for new users

  • Dashboard with industry alerts, customer performance, and personalized filters

  • Discovery tool with customizable search filters (protein, process type, serotype)

  • Facility profiles with performance timelines, percentile comparisons, and culture results

  • Watchlist & My Facilities to track high-priority accounts

  • Notifications for new datasets, recalls, and status changes

  • Product page with all offerings listed in a separate section

Outcomes

MVP launch was well-received by internal stakeholders and users

  1. Additional usability demos post-launch helped guide onboarding

  2. Created a user guide to support adoption

  3. Resulted in 100% user retention at the time of onboarding

What I accomplished

Advocated for UX in a low-maturity design environment

  1. Led end-to-end UX strategy and wireframe development.

  2. Introduced and implemented the CLEAR framework.

  3. Translated complex biotech knowledge into accessible user flows.

  4. Facilitated cross-functional collaboration between PMs, engineers, and visual designers.

  5. Set foundational design patterns for scalable interface decisions.

What I used

  • Figma

  • Information Architecture

  • Wireframing

  • UX Strategy

  • Cross-functional Alignment

  • Biotech Data Visualization

  • Low-Fidelity Prototyping

  • Stakeholder Communication

  • Agile Tools

Reflection

Working at Ancera taught me how to lead design clarity in complex, ambiguous environments. It also reinforced my belief that a clear framework (like CLEAR) can not only bring order to chaos — it can help product teams see through the noise and design with purpose.

Want to know how I introduce clarity to chaotic cultures?

Discover my signature C.L.E.A.R. framework — built for real-world UX in startups and low-maturity orgs.

You can read more about it here.