Usability Testing for Crop and Farmer Activity Information System

Information System usability level depends on acceptance and system convenience to be run by users. One of the methods to measure usability level is by conducting usability testing. This article elaborates usability testing for Crop and Farmer Activity Information System. This system is one of the agriculture information systems that is developed to record system activities for each farm field. This system is considered as one of the important role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for agriculture. This system has been developing since 2017 and needs to be assessed and tested. To assess the system, usability testing was conducted by taking sampling from two regions in Central Java, Temanggung and Gombong. The respondents are system administrators, farmers, and general users with each of respondents has different criteria. There are 58 respondents participated in this research: 49 farmers, 3 system administrators, and 6 general users. Usability testing was carried out by giving respondents several test tasks based on the system. Each respondent had different kind of test task in accordance with the system functionality for each user. The result of the test found that system administrator user interface assessment value gained average percentage of 69%, while the farmers gained 76% and general users gained 79%. From the test, it also bring some recommendations for system refinement. Those recommendations were taken from user inputs and user test results. The recommendations have been made to bring better system environment. Keywords—Usability testing; crop and activity information system; improvement recommendation; precision farming; information technology for agriculture


I. INTRODUCTION
Agriculture is one of the biggest sectors in Indonesia.Indonesia is popular with diversity of crop: rice, corn, sugar, and soybeans [1].Historically, agriculture contributed to Indonesia"s economic growth and decrease unemployment.It also helped government to decrease poverty rate [1].Agriculture sector has low productivity while the number of people engaged in this sector is very high [2].This problem becomes one of the challenges for the government.To increase the farmer"s productivity, there are some important things should be handled [1]: 1) Government should focus on farmer incomes; 2) Government should increase the productivity through research and extension system; 3) Government is able to provide funding by giving farmer credit from state budget; 4) Government is able to help farmer by giving access to irrigation and building infrastructure for irrigation; 5) Government should protect agriculture sector and farmer from imported diseases and increase agriculture product standards.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is one of tools that can help government to increase farmer"s productivity.Initiatives to develop rural information and communication technology (ICT) bring an opportunity to disseminate information to rural communities.Evolution of smartphone user also helps ICT penetration to rural area.Implementation of ICT for agriculture encourages an innovation in ICT for agriculture.Implementation of ICT in agriculture is able to help in three main processes [3]: (1) Land selection and calendar definition by giving information systems including Decision Support System, Management Information System, or Geographic Information System; (2) ICT enabled learning and knowledge exchange by helping in calendar definition, land preparation, access in credit for farmer, water management, and input management; (3) Networking and e-Commerce to help agriculture product marketing.
One of the systems that is enabled ICT role for agriculture is by providing information system for crop and farmer activity.Researchers has been developing crop and farmer activity in order to collect and issue crop data collection, planting calendar definition, farmer activity, and agriculture product data collection [4].Crop and Farmer activity Information System is also able to provide report graphically and summarize data.The system is also able to predict harvest time for farmers in some specific calendar [4].
Crop and Farmer Activity Information System has been developing since 2017.This system needs to be evaluated and tested to measure system satisfaction level and give improvement recommendation.Therefore, usability testing and evaluation should be conducted to achieve system efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction.The objective of this research is to evaluate system interface using usability testing.From the evaluation, some improvement recommendation is conducted to bring better user interface and the system is able to be used easily.
This paper is discussed the study background and what has been done in the previous research.Following the first part, researchers discuss about usability testing and some researches were conducted related with usability testing.Research methodology is the next part and followed by discussion and analysis.The last part is the conclusion and recommendation for future works.www.ijacsa.thesai.org

A. Crop and Farmer Activity Information System
Crop and Farmer Activity Information System is a system that gives information to the user related to crop specification, planting calendar, and prediction of harvest time [4].This system is developed in Indonesia Language since the system is targeted to users (farmer, farmer group representative, and academician).Crop data collection provides detail information about crop and specific characteristics.Figure 1 shows crop information page.
Figure 1 shows Crop Information Page which provides detail information about the crop.Some detail information like root characteristic, trunk characteristic, leave characteristic, fruit and seed characteristic.This information is available for farmer, farmer group representative, and academician [4]   Another function available in this system is farmer activity.This feature provides a system for farmer to entry specified information related with what activity they do.This data bring information about the number of farmer activities (figure 2, figure 3) and yields (figure 4, figure 5) based on district and crop.
Figure 2 and 3 shows the farmer activity reports and summary.This report provides information about the number of farmers or users which conducting specific activity (figure 2).On the other hand, figure 3 shows information about the number of crop planted by farmers.This two reports can be drilled down based on region or province.

B. Usability Evaluation and Testing
Usability has been defined as a measurement of system effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction [5].Usability is also an assessment to measure quality level and human point of view about the systems [6] [7] .Mack and Nielsen [8] categorized the evaluation method into four classification: (1) Usability evaluation through evaluation software; (2) Usability testing is assessed by evaluating the user interface with real user; (3) Usability measures by using models and formulas; (4) Usability is measured based on rules of thumb and the general skill, knowledge, and experience of the evaluators.The usability testing is an assessment method to measure the degree of interactive system is easy and pleasant to use with a view of identifying usability problems and / or a collection of usability measures / metrics [9].Thus, usability is a media to gain good quality of web, by measuring reliability, functionality, usability, efficiency, maintainability, and portability [7].
Usability has 5 quality components [10]: (1) Learnability: How easy the users to finish task given and how fast user understand functionalities in the system; (2) Efficiency: How fast the user can perform the tasks given after learn the system; (3) Memorability: How easily user can reestablish proficiency after a period of time do not use it; (4) Errors: How many times users do error and how easily the users can recover from the errors?(5) Satisfaction: How positive the users against the system user interface.Usability is necessary for system survival.People will choose the system that is easily to be used.People will not use the system that difficult to be used [10].Thus, usability testing is done to test those 5 quality components.
Usability is concerned with quantitative and qualitative analysis, which is measured timed-based and traffic-based data [9].Usability level is gained by conducting testing for respondents by distributing the questionnaire.Each question will be tested validity and readability that the data obtained from the questionnaire can be used as a solid basis for research data [11].
Usability testing has been conducting for some research topics.Lestari [12] conducted usability testing to test web application for small and medium enterprise in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia.Usability is measured using Post-study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ).There are four reviews: overall satisfaction score (OVERALL), system usability (SYSUSE), information quality (INFOQUAL), and user interface quality (INTERQUAL).From the study, it is found that 56% of the respondents are satisfied with the system (4.22 for OVERALL points).64% of respondents agree that web application helps them to promote their products (4.43 for SYSUSE points).Small and medium enterprise site does not have complete information for product catalogue.It makes information quality score only 3.71 with 36% respondents agree.On the other hand, 60% respondents agree that the system has good quality user interface.
Usability testing was also done to evaluate government websites [13].This paper is to study whether the government websites fulfills the Nielsen usability components.To find the result, 30 users were given some tasks and post-test questionnaires.Those tasks are related with finding some information in the e-Government sites and post-test questionnaires included Nielsen"s usability components.From the tasks and post-test questionnaires, it is found that most of users (27 respondents) agreed that the e-Government websites is quick to perform.28 of 30 respondents also agree that the e-Government sites are easily to be remembered and they are satisfied with the websites.With the new user interface, e-Government sites quicker to perform, easier to understand, and more satisfied.The researchers already conducted the third test and it is found that the result from the third test increased comparing with the other two tests.
Usability evaluation was also done to test the e-Learning system in one of the public universities in Kenya [14].This university has implemented Moodle e-Learning system.This research is to find what factors that are affected the usability of e-Learning system.The components that were tested in this evaluation: learnability, user-friendliness, technological infrastructure, usability policy, culture, and gender.From the study, it is found that the learnability brings significant affect to usability of e-Learning system.It is suggested that to enhance e-Learning system in the university, the system should be easily to be learnt.User friendly factor also affects the user ability.E-Learning should be user friendly to be usable in the university [14].
Usability testing is also to test one of the biggest community site in Indonesia, kaskus.co.id.There are some problems found in this research, such as the process of the posting, the advertisement on the page which makes user inconvenience, and difficulties to organize picture in this community [15].Some influential factors of website, such as simplicity, user-friendliness, comfort, navigability, link visibility, high and readable color contrast, and right to the point information got medium point, which range from 0.2 to 0.6.The finding is also got moderate level of usability for kaskus, the community site in Indonesia [15] III.RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Starting this research, researchers did literature study and exploring crop and farming activity system.This initial study was conducted to observe research methodology and explore system functionalities.After finishing initial study, researchers define the respondents.There are 58 respondents from two regions in central java, Gombong and Temanggung, involved in this research.Those respondents are categorized into 3 kinds of users with each user has specific ability and requirements: (1) Farmer: Farmer respondents should be able to operate computer and / or smartphone, minimum age is 20, and graduate minimum from junior high schools; (2) System Administrator.System administrator should be able to operate computer and understand the basic computer operation, and graduated from bachelor degree; (3) General User.General user graduated at least from junior high school, minimum age is 20, has the ability to operate computer and / or smartphone.General user can be government as a representative from department of agriculture, academician, or civil society.
After defining the respondents, the next step in this research is defining tasks with these following criteria: (1) Task description should be available in each task; (2) The tested page should appear when user do the task on the tested www.ijacsa.thesai.orgpage; (3) There should be explanation about the task step in each task given; (4) Success task is given when respondent is able to finish the task; (5) Maximum time (second) is time limitation for respondents to finish each task.Table 1 below describes task for farmers: Table I, II, and III shows the detail tasks for specific users.To test this website usability, there are some indicators: (1) Task Success.This indicator measures user effectiveness in order to finish the task; (2) Time on task.This indicator measures how much time respondent needs to finish a task; (3) Error.This indicator evaluates respondent performance to use the system; (4) Efficiency.This indicator measures the system efficiency to finish the tasks by count the number of click.
Researchers also prepared test scenario for respondents, as follows: (1) Usability testing is carried out one by one respondent of each required criteria; (2) Respondent will be provided with a laptop with the system displayed on the laptop; (3) Usability testing is conducted at the flexible places; (4) Researchers explain each step of testing step; (5) Respondent will be given a document about system description and task; (6) Researchers record processing time for a respondent to finish a task, count errors that happen during doing the test; count the number of click to finish a task.
Researchers will analyze the data with metric usabilitytask success, metric usabilitytime on task, error data analysis, and efficiency data analysis.The next step after analyzing the data is making some improvement recommendation.Improvement recommendation is given based on the usability test result.

A. Descriptive Statistics
There are 58 respondents participated in this research: 49 farmers, 3 system administrators, and 6 general users.Based on age, those respondents can be categorized as follows: Table IV shows the number of respondent based on age category.Almost 50% of respondent"s age is 20 to 30 years old.There are 9 respondents are 41 to 50 years old as a farmer.There are also 3 general user respondents which are aged more than 51 years old.Table V shows the number of respondent based on education background.There are 30 respondents which are junior high school graduates.Those are farmer respondents.There are also 19 farmer respondents who graduate from senior high school.System administrator respondents graduate from senior high school.The rest are general user respondents and system administrator.There is a general user respondent who already completed master degree.

B. Testing Result
This research involved 58 respondents to finish several tasks to measure task success, time on task, error, and efficiency (number of click).Time on task is a measurement for user effectiveness to finish a task.While task success is a measurement of how many respondents are able to finish the task.Error is to calculate how many mistakes respondents did.And the last is efficiency as a measurement of how many efforts respondents did in a system.In this research, effectiveness is measured by counting the number of click respondent did during finishing a task.

1) System administrator respondents
The first step to conduct usability testing is measuring maximum time to do the tasks.Maximum time is got by taking 4 random samples and double average times to finish tasks.
Table VI shows the maximum time limit to do tasks.Each task has different maximum time.If the respondents are not able to finish task until the maximum time, respondents will be considered and assumed as an error.After completing the task, there are 3 respondents who are not able to finish task 4 on time, 2 respondents who are not able to finish task 5 on time, and 1 respondents who are not able to finish task 6 on time.
Table VII shows the success rate of system administrator task.Those task is filled with 1 if the respondent is succeed to finish the task and 0 if the respondent is failed to finisih the task.It is seen that there is no respondent who is able to finish the task 4 and only 1 respondent who is able to finish task 6.
Respondents are not able to finish task 4 since there is no symbol on the page menu or active label if the page is active.Thus, respondents faced difficulties while doing the task.
Contrary to the success rate calculation, error rate is to measure the respondents" error while finishing tasks.On task 4, respondents were not able to show crop menu.Respondents show crop / plant morphology data.Respondents are also not able to show the data which is given from the task.

The last measurement is efficiency (number of click).
Efficiency is to measure how much efforts respondents do in a system.The number of click is compared with minimum click to finish task.The minimum click to finish the task is 46.Table VIII below shows efficiency of system administrator by counting number of click.
Table VIII shows the system administrator efficiency.The number of click is slightly above the minimum number of click.The respondents explore the system functionality well.It makes respondents are able to click the tasks efficiently.2) Farmer respondents There are 49 farmer respondents are involved in this research.Among those 49 respondents, there are 13 data is invalid because the respondents got help from the others to finish the task.Those invalid data are not analyzed.5 respondents are chosen to benchmark maksimum time.
Table IX shows the maximum time limit to do several tasks.Based on those benchmark, it is shown the number of successful respondents based on time limitation.
Table X shows the successful respondents to finish the task based on the time limitations.Some tasks has good success rate.On the contrary, less than 50% respondents is not able to finish task 2, 5, 6, and 8. From the task 6 test, respondents are difficult to find edit button.Some of respondents thinks that "+" button is edit button.On task 9, 10, and 11 respondents should scroll down the page to find the summary button.From these task test, it is suggested to refine the system user interface to ease user to access the menu.Task Success is calculated with binary success.If the success rate percentage is bigger than 78%, the task can be completed properly.Table XI shows the success rate of each task given to the respondents.
Table XI shows the success rate of each task.When doing the task 7, some respondents did some mistakes by choosing the wrong data to be filtered.Respondents also print and display the wrong planting calendar.Another variable to be analyzed is farmer respondent"s efficiency.Average click to finish all tasks is 59 while the predetermined value for farmer respondents to finish the task is 51.It means that there is difference on both two values.It is found during the test that some respondents faced difficulties to find some buttons on its page.

3) General user respondents
Similarly with Farmer respondents and system administrators, researchers carried out analysis for benchmark maximum time limit.It is determined by calculating average time of 5 sample respondents for each task.
Table XII shows the maximum time for general user respondents.There are 6 respondents for general user.After finishing the test, the data is analyzed to get the number of successful respondents and unsuccessful respondents.Table XIII below shows the number of successful and unsuccessful respondents for each task.www.ijacsa.thesai.orgTable XIII shows the number of successful and unsuccessful respondents finishing the task before maximum time.There are some tasks with the number of unsuccessful respondents are so high (more than 3 respondents).While doing the test task 1, 4, and 5, respondents were not able to find the display button and made respondents are not able to finish the tasks on time.Respondents found similar problem with display or detail button on task 6.Another case found on this test is respondents found difficulty to use search bar.Respondents are also hard to find "Summary" button since this button is located on the bottom of page.Respondents should scroll down the page.There were some mistakes that the respondents did: (1)   Table XIV shows success rate of each task.Task 1-9, there is no respondent made errors during finishing the task.Otherwise, there is 33.33% respondents who did some errors finishing the task 10, 14, and 16.There is 16.67% respondents who are not succeed to finish the task 13 and 15.While 50% respondents are failed finishing the task 11.
Minimum number of click to finish tasks is 69 and the average of respondents click finishing the task is 101.This minimum number of click cannot be achieved since respondents are difficult to find the summary button.The location of the button is not able to be seen clearly.www.ijacsa.thesai.org

C. Combining Metrics based on Percentage
Table XV shows the metric based on percentage.This technique is to combine different scale of value, convert it into percentage, and calculate the average of each parameters (time per task, task success, number of clicks, and efficiency).Based on table XV, average time to do task for system administrator is 52% from maximum time.The usage of option button can not be understood easily for the respondents.System Administrator respondents only 79% are succeed to finish tasks because some respondents did the activities on the wrong page.The number of clicks is 95%.It means that users click the correct button.On the contrary, the accuracy is only 50% due to system administrator respondents are not able to finish some tasks.
General user respondents conducted and finished the task well.The average time to do task is 66% from the maximum time with the success rate around 84%.There are some failed activities which users are not able to finish it because of difficulties to translate English button, for example submit button.While the number of click is 70% and the efficiency is 83%.The average number of efficiency for general users is higher than system administrator.
Farmer respondents finished tasks with the average time 66%.Some respondents are failed to finish the task because of the usage of the wrong symbol.Thus, the respondents are not able to understand the meaning.User interface of the system does not provide good information to the respondents.On the contrary, the number of succeed respondents to finish the tasks is 91% with efficiency around 91%.It means that most of the farmer respondents are able to finish the task but some of them need additional time to finish the task.

D. Improvement Recommendation
Improvement recommendation is given according to the task test result, feedback from the respondents, and the analysis of the data from the task test result.System should display that the system is an agriculture system 4. Information about how to care of plant should be available 5. Additional picture for each plant is required 6.There should be changes in menu naming 7. User interface makes some distractions 8. Searching is not addressing what is being sought 9. Icon is required on each button 10.Navigation should be changed to accordion type that will made easy to be scrolled.11.Header and footer should use different colour 12. Active username should be visible

Responden ts Recommendations
General Respondent s 1. Icon (+) can be replaced with icon () 2. Active menu should be highlighted 3. Accordion menu type should be used in order to ease user to scroll 4. Active username should be visible 5. Sort function will be added with icon and background 6. Header and footer should use different colour Farmers 1. Icon is required on each button 2. Indonesian language should be used in each button 3. Button edit, delete, and summary should be visible to the user 4. Accordion menu type should be used in order to ase user to scroll 5. Active username should be visible 6. Summary button will be placed closer to the content in order to ease user finding the button 7. Distance between column in each table will be narrowed down.User does not need to click additional button Table XVI shows the improvement recommendation for each user.Recommendations are categorized into 3 users.Some recommendations are the same, for instance in each user, there is a recommendation to display current active username on page, additional icon is required for each button, different colour between header and footer.

E. Improvement Result
Improvement recommendation has been generated.Based on those recommendations, researchers try to fulfill the improvement needs.The improvements are arranged based on the recommendations for all 3 category user.

1) Highlighting the active menu
Figure 6 shows the changes before and after the revision.On the left, it is shown that active menu was not highlighted.On the right, it is shown that active menu has been highlighted.

2) Changes in Icon (+) to Icon ()
Figure 7 shows the icon (+) before the changes.That icon has been replaced with icon () which is displayed in figure 8.The changes also include removal of show button.Show button has been removed (figure 8).User is only able to delete and edit the record.www.ijacsa.thesai.org  3) Moving the searching text box to make it visible to user Some respondents had problem while they should search specific data.They found difficulties to search and the menu is required to be moved.Farmer respondents found difficulties while adding, printing, sorting, and searching data.Therefore, additional icon is needed to ease user.Figure 11 shows the menu before changes and figure 12 shows the menu after changes.Figure 11 shows the add button, print, sorting menu, and searching menu before changes.Button should be changes to ease the user while searching menu should be moved down slightly.Figure 12 shows the improvement changes for those buttons and menus.

V. CONCLUSIONS
Based on the research, there are some conclusions as follows: 1) Usability problems for agriculture activity information system are the usage of inappropriate button icon, button position does not locate on the right position, and navigation of menu sidebar does not display current active menu.User also faced difficulties problem with symbol button.
2) Task test from usability analysis for agriculture activity information system: three kinds of respondent (system administrator, farmer, and general user) assess that agriculture activity information system is good with average overall assessment value 69% -79%.
3) There are some improvement recommendations that will improve system usability.Those recommendations has been followed up by doing several refinements.

Fig 4 and 5
Fig 4 and 5 brings information of the amount of yield for specified date.This information are generated from the data entered by farmers.These four graphics are able to cascade down to get more detail information.

Fig. 8 .
Fig. 8. Improvement Result of Icon and Display Button.

Figure 9
Figure 9 and 10 shows the location of the searching menu.Searching menu before the improvement changes is located on the left top on each page.After the improvement changes, searching menu is located little bit down.This movement is based on the test recommendation.While doing the task test, respondents needed extra time to find the searching menu.

TABLE I
a. Find the link "Print" b.Show the data on the excel format System will show the graph, download the data, and show on the excel format 21.24 www.ijacsa.thesai.org

TABLE II .
TESTED TASKS FOR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR RESPONDENT

TABLE IV .
RESPONDENT PROFILE BASED ON AGE

TABLE VI .
BENCHMARK MAXIMUM TIME FOR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR

TABLE IX .
BENCHMARK MAXIMUM TIME FOR FARMERS

TABLE X .
NUMBER OF RESPONDENTS WHICH NEEDS TIME ABOVE AND BELOW MAXIMUM TIME LIMIT AND AVERAGE TIME TO FINISIH TASK

TABLE XII .
BENCHMARK MAXIMUM TIME FOR GENERAL USERS

TABLE XIII .
NUMBER OF RESPONDENTS DID TASK BELOW AND ABOVE AVERAGE TIME AND AVERAGE TIME TO FINISIH TASK respondents are not able to visit summary page; (2) respondents are failed to filter based on specific keywords; (3) respondents are wrong to choose the appropriate menu.

TABLE XIV .
SUCCESSFUL RATE OF EACH TASK Table XVI shows the improvement recommendation for the systems.

TABLE XVI . IMPROVEMENT RECOMMENDATION Responden ts Recommendations System
Administrat or 1. Menu and navigation should use different colour 2. Active menu should be highlighted 3.