GeoBags
A small peek into a real feature with real needs, real restraints, and the real process of how it was designed.
Client | Radicle Agronomics
Date | Sept. 2025
Role | Digital Product Designer
background
Radicle Agronomics has a suite of tools to manage soil testing for crop fields.
The Radicle App allows users to upload their fields and plan how they’re going to pull soil samples.
In the field, the GeoPress provides a clean process to fill and geotag soil samples.
These samples are sent to the Radicle Lab, the world’s first automated soil testing lab. Once the samples are analyzed, the results can be reviewed in the Radicle App.
GeoBags will empower farmers to sample their own fields and send them to a Radicle Lab for analysis without the initial investment of GeoPress, while still providing convenient geotagging capabilities.
task
While sampling: Tweak the sampling flow to let the user use a GeoBag in place of a Geotube.
After sampling: Let a lab operator reliably transfer the content of a GeoBag into a GeoTube in high volumes.
my mini-decisions
On short timelines for small features, a designer isn’t there to run through all the steps: they’re there to make many small judgement calls to get the feature useable.
1. Pop-up for every logged point
Positive and informative feedback for a successful action. This is especially important if users are using AB lines (the track that applicators follow to apply or seed a field), as it allows the user to check that the coordinates line up.
2.Tracking Scans
Tracking the number of GeoBags scanned provides traceability into a high-volume action.
3. GeoTube Management Landing Page
The original page were some unclear options between reading and writing to GeoTubes, with the ability to lookup a tube being managed separately.
I used this revisit to consolidate these options plus the new “transfer” action to “GeoTube Management”, and clearly laid out the actions that could be taken on this page.
4. Recently Accessed GeoTube List
GeoTubes are managed in bulk, and not differentiated from each other unless scanned. The ability to reference a table of recently read, written, or transferred allows users to view GeoTube details a second time, without having to track down the physical tube.
5. Explicit Instructions for Tube Transfer
The Tube Transfer is not a familiar action. It’s unique to our product, and will only be used with this special-case feature.
Most of the time, I’d want the feature to be intuitive enough to speak for itself. However, the extra direction in this case provides additional confidence to the user
6. Redesign of flows to support loops
Reading, scanning, or transferring GeoTubes will consist of preforming the action on a whole field more than half the time. I prioritized the repetition of the flow over completion of the flow.
7. Another way to get to the same spot
To “transfer”, you scan a full GeoBag with a phone, then empty the soil into a bluetooth- connected GeoPress in order to transfer the data encoded on the bag onto the tube.
Users are used to using the phone to read and modify GeoTube data. Anticipating this desire, I slotted in an additional feature pitch: letting the user scan a bag, then scan the tube the soil was being transferred into. This lets the user skip the GeoPress portion if needed.
8. Jump to Location
A view of the sample on the map accessible from the details page of any GeoTube.
outcome
Having a designer on this team was a new addition. GeoBags were the first full features that was put out that was nearly fully following my design.
On review of the feature, the support team seemed somewhat surprised that they didn’t have any feedback for the developer – it worked and felt good out of the gate. Under other circumstances, this would have gone through a few more iterations between support and the developer.