Turning AUA's Agricultural Expertise Into a Tool Anyone in Chicago Could Use
Client
Advocates for Urban Agriculture
Deliverable
Web Application
Platform
Web
Client
Advocates for Urban Agriculture
Urban Agriculture Coalition, Chicago
Advocates for Urban Agriculture (AUA) is a Chicago-based coalition of urban farms, community gardens, schools, businesses, and individuals working to expand and sustain urban agriculture across the region. Founded in 2002, AUA's community has grown to over 2,300 members. Their mission is straightforward: educate, connect, and advocate for the policies and practices that help urban farming thrive. They had two decades of expertise. What they needed was a way to get it into the hands of the people who could act on it.
The Challenge
Expert knowledge that lived in people's heads - not somewhere practitioners could find it.
AUA knew what good agricultural practice looked like across food safety, grower safety, conservation, and the social impacts of urban farming. The problem was delivery. That knowledge was sitting with their experts - not in the hands of the farm business owners, community gardeners, and first-time growers who needed it most.
A static resource library wasn't the answer. What AUA wanted was something that could meet practitioners where they were - assess where they stood, surface the gaps they might not even know they had, and give them something actionable in return. The tool also had to work for two very different kinds of users: someone who wanted to run through the assessment without creating an account, and someone who wanted to come back over time and track their progress.
AUA also needed visibility on the other end. Staff had to be able to download assessment data and update the content as practices and policies evolved - without relying on a developer every time something changed.
What They Needed
One platform that had to work for everyone - and two very different use cases.
01
No Barriers for Anonymous Users
Not every practitioner wants to create an account. The platform had to be fully usable without saving any data - so anyone could run through the assessment and walk away with useful feedback, no login required.
02
Progress Tracking for Returning Users
For practitioners who did want to come back and measure improvement over time, the platform needed to support accounts and data persistence - without making that the default or required path.
03
Operation-Specific Assessments
A rooftop farm has different practices and risks than a community garden or a school plot. Each growing operation type needed its own tailored assessment, with questions relevant to that specific context.
04
Staff Control Over Content
Agricultural best practices change. Policies change. AUA needed a way to download assessment data and update question content themselves, without a developer in the loop every time something shifted.
What We Built
A self-serve assessment platform with real-time feedback at every step.
Growing Operation Selector
Users start by selecting their type of growing operation. Each option opens a tailored assessment with questions specific to that context - so the feedback is relevant, not generic.
Categorized Assessment Sections
Questions are grouped by category across food safety, grower safety, conservation, and social impact. Users move through each section in a logical sequence that mirrors how practitioners actually think about their work.
Section Overviews and Breakdowns
Before each section begins, users see a plain-language summary of what's ahead and how many questions they'll be answering. No surprises, no guessing how long it'll take.
Multiple Choice With Multi-Select Support
Each question is multiple choice with the option to select one or several answers - matching the reality that good practice isn't always a single right answer.
Real-Time Section Recommendations
At the end of each section, users see feedback specific to their selections - what they're doing well and where there's room to improve. They can also revisit feedback from earlier sections without starting over.
Staff Data Tools
AUA staff can download assessment data to identify where common pitfalls are appearing across the user base, and update question content directly as practices and policies change.
The Approach
How IDE Interactive Approached It
01
Understanding Where Practitioners Actually Get Stuck
Before we designed anything, we needed to understand what "common pitfalls in the field" actually looked like. That meant working closely with AUA to map the real gaps - where growers were making mistakes, what they didn't know they didn't know, and which categories of practice (food safety, grower safety, conservation, social impact) needed the most educational weight.
That research shaped the entire information architecture of the assessment - what sections existed, in what order, and how granular each set of questions needed to be to surface meaningful feedback rather than surface-level scores.
02
Designing for Two Users at Once
The anonymous user and the returning user have fundamentally different needs, but they're using the same tool. We designed the experience so that both paths feel natural and complete - without forcing anyone into an account they don't want, and without making the returning user's experience feel bolted on. Anonymous users get full access to the assessment and real-time feedback. Returning users get that plus the ability to come back, review past results, and measure how their practices have changed over time. The data persistence logic had to handle both cleanly.
03
Real-Time Feedback as a Teaching Tool, Not Just a Score
A score at the end of an assessment doesn't help a grower understand what to change Monday morning. We built the feedback architecture so that at the end of every section, users see recommendations tied directly to their specific selections - what they're doing well, and the specific practices that could reduce risk or improve outcomes. Each question carries its own set of attached feedback and context, so the recommendations aren't generic. A grower who selects a particular answer gets feedback relevant to that answer, not a one-size-fits-all response.
04
Keeping AUA in Control of the Content
An assessment platform is only as useful as the accuracy of its questions. Agricultural practices and food safety standards change, and AUA couldn't be dependent on a developer every time they needed to update a question or download data to analyze trends. We built staff tools that let AUA manage the content directly - updating questions, adjusting feedback, and pulling assessment data to understand where practitioners across their 2,300-member network were consistently struggling. The platform stays current because the people closest to the subject matter can keep it that way.
The Outcome
What Changed
Before
Two decades of agricultural expertise with no scalable way to deliver it - and no visibility into where Chicago-area practitioners were struggling most.
Knowledge locked with AUA experts, not accessible at scale
No way to assess practitioner gaps or measure common pitfalls
No self-serve tool for anonymous or returning users
Staff dependent on developers to update content or pull data
After
A public-facing assessment platform that puts AUA's expertise directly in the hands of farm operators, community gardeners, and aspiring growers - with real-time feedback at every step and staff tools that keep it current.
Self-serve assessments available to any practitioner, no account required
Operation-specific questions across multiple growing types
Section-by-section feedback with targeted recommendations
AUA staff can update content and download data independently
The best way to understand what we built is to take the assessment.
