How I helped Riverview streamline contract creation and boost grower confidence through a transparent digital experience.
When I joined Bushel's product design team, I began working with Riverview, one of Bushel's agriculture clients. Bushel builds digital tools that help growers and grain buyers manage everyday operations like deliveries, payments, and contracts.
My role as a Product designer was to understand Riverview's contract process and turn it from a slow, manual workflow into a smooth, end-to-end digital experience. That meant translating how admins and growers were used to working with spreadsheets and emails into an intuitive platform that supported automation, accuracy, and real-time collaboration.
My role: Product designer at Bushel
Duration: 1 year and 6 months
Responsibilities: End-to-end process
What did I do?
Understanding the Problem Through Hands-On Research
To truly understand why Riverview's contract creation was so time-consuming, I immersed myself in their daily workflow. I joined research sessions via Zoom three times a week, shadowing admins as they built and managed grower contracts while noting every tool, file, and step they used.
These virtual sessions gave me a front-row view of how disconnected spreadsheets, emails, and PDFs created constant rework and confusion. I interviewed both admins and growers to understand their frustrations and documented each phase; from contract setup to approval and renewal, to visualize where delays and miscommunication were happening.
By combining these observations with feedback from product and engineering, I identified not only the pain points but also clear opportunities to simplify, automate, and align the experience across teams.
Here's what I found out
Manual Process
Observing
Pattern
Manual Processes
Manual processes created costly delays and frustration.
Each contract took three to five days to complete. Admins spent hours re-entering data, checking numbers, and reconciling different versions. Growers often received outdated documents, which stalled renewals and strained relationships
Observing
Observing users exposed systemic inefficiencies
Through workflow audits and shadowing through zoom sessions, I discovered that data was being copied from disconnected Excel sheets and that no automation existed to validate pricing or populate fields. There was also no shared dashboard showing progress or ownership. Surveys confirmed the pain, 85 % of growers cited delays as their top complaint, and admin workload had ballooned by 90 %.
CATCHING THE PATTERNS
Patterns
During my weekly Zoom sessions, I started noticing the same struggles repeat themselves. Admins bounced between spreadsheets and emails, trying to reconcile numbers while growers questioned outdated details. Small mistakes snowballed into missed deadlines and tension on both sides. To manage the chaos, Riverview even assigned a special admin just to review contracts before sending them out. That’s when it became clear this wasn’t only an efficiency problem. The lack of structure and visibility had turned into a trust issue, and solving that became the heart of the redesign.
Turning Research into Structure
After research, I mapped how admins and growers interacted across every step of the contract journey from setup to renewal to pinpoint where delays and handoffs occurred.
These insights became clear architecture flows that outlined how the process should work digitally, serving as a shared blueprint for product, design, and engineering.
By making the workflow visible, I helped the team connect user pain points to system logic and align on what to build first for Riverview's MVP.
After aligning with my product team and Riverview, we agreed that the first MVP should directly address the root issue; trust.
Automated Contract Generator
Allowing contracts creation, reducing manual entry and errors.
Real-Time Market Data
Integrate live market data feeds to offer growers actionable insights for optimal pricing decisions.
Error Checking Algorithms
Implement algorithms that flag inconsistencies or outliers in contract data entries for review.
Dashboard with Status Tracking
A central dashboard where both growers and admins can view the status of contracts and relevant analytics at a glance.
Rapid sketches let me compare layout options, reveal friction points early, and align with tech on what was feasible for the first MVP.
A high-level view for admins to monitor all contracts in one place,
showing totals, active and expired contracts, and quick access to
details.
Intention: To help admins regain visibility and
trust by centralizing contract information instead of relying on
disconnected spreadsheets.
Description: A calendar interface showing how admins could
select contract start dates and times.
Intention: To
validate the feasibility of adding scheduling logic early and
ensure the design supported real-world use before committing to
hi-fi development.
A mobile-friendly layout where growers can view contract
progress, respond to changes, and approve terms on the go.
Intention: To extend usability beyond desktop and
empower growers to participate in real-time from any device,
reinforcing transparency and collaboration.
A step-by-step process for creating new contracts with fields
for duration, start date, and type.
Intention: To
simplify the creation process and reduce manual errors by
guiding admins through structured input and clear progress cues.
An interface concept showing how admins could search, filter,
and verify contract details before final approval.
Intention: To test how built-in review checkpoints could
replace the need for a dedicated contract-review admin, ensuring
quality without adding extra roles.
SOLUTIONS
Designed with automated contract creation in mind to reduce manual entry and errors, allowing growers and admins to process agreements faster and with greater confidence.
SOLUTIONS
Designed a central dashboard to give growers and admins real-time visibility into contract status, reducing uncertainty and enabling quicker decision-making.
SOLUTIONS
Platform integrated live market data, so growers gain timely insights, enabling better pricing decisions and reducing reliance on manual updates.
By streamlining contract generation, I cut creation time from one month to under five minutes and reduced admin workload by 80%, boosting efficiency and accuracy. This dramatic improvement is reflected in the reduced time spent on managing contracts and the decreased error rate, transforming the administrative workflow into a more strategic and less time-consuming task.
V1 was released in November 2022
Learning & Reflection
I learned the value of user-centered design, simplicity, and continuous feedback, ensuring products are intuitive, widely adopted, and improved over time.
User-Centered Design is Key
This project reinforced how powerful user-centered design and simplicity can be when solving real problems.
Simplicity Drives Adoption
Streamlining steps and reducing friction helped make the digital workflow feel natural and intuitive.
Feedback Loops are Crucial for Improvement
Continuous feedback loops ensured every iteration moved closer to what users actually needed.
It reminded me that good design builds confidence , not just usability , something I'll carry into every project ahead. 🚀
