TankMix — A Global UX Research Program
TankMix is a global AgriTech mobile application developed by Yara International, used by farmers and agrochemical technicians worldwide to manage spray program decisions in the field. This case study documents the hybrid UX research program I led as Front-to-End Senior UX Researcher — from foundational discovery through evaluative validation — conducted to inform a complete product redesign of the application across global markets.
Abstract
This case study documents a hybrid UX
research program conducted for TankMix, a global AgriTech mobile application by
Yara International, with 50,000+ installs across Europe and Asia. The research
addressed both foundational and evaluative objectives simultaneously — decoding
cross-cultural behavioral differences in how farmers interact with agrochemical
decision tools across European and Asian markets.
Client
Yara
International — Global AgriTech Division Products: TankMix · Integration Markets: Europe and Asia
Challenge
Structural
navigation failures and absent data attributes were blocking ROI measurement
across markets. Regional behavioral differences in how farmers approach
agrochemical decision-making required a cross-cultural research approach to
diagnose adoption barriers and define a unified redesign direction.
Methods Hybrid mixed-methods research program
integrating:
- Design sprints with double and cross-validated qualitative depth
interviews
- Moderated usability studies and behavioral workflow analysis
- Prototype evaluation and design sprint facilitation
- Inferential statistical modeling and correlation analysis
Findings
-
A 4-step behavioral journey model adopted as the
cross-platform redesign blueprint
- Core product differentials identified with regional adoption signals, directly shaping UI architecture decisions during design sprint prototype evaluation
Outcomes
- Incorporation of proprietary new features post-research
- Zero user attrition during cross-version migration
- 50,000+ downloads on the subsequent redesigned application launch
- Improvement in interface (UI) clarity and task completion
- Post-launch ROI improvement
Overview & Research Goal
The engagement originated from Yara International's global innovation team, which identified the need to evaluate their most frequently used mobile digital product — TankMix — for full redesign. The product was already live and operational, which meant the research program had to simultaneously address both foundational questions about unmet user needs and evaluative questions about existing interface failures. The goal was to identify all redesign elements that would increase user acquisition across diverse agricultural markets, generating greater brand loyalty and improving the decision-making efficiency of farmers operating the application in real field conditions.
Role, Tools, Team & Timeline
Role: Front-to-End Senior UX Researcher — full ownership of research design, execution, analysis, and delivery across all phases of the program. The engagement ran from July to November 2022 across 20 weeks. The team included a Global Director of UX, a Lead Designer, and 9 Incubator Regional Leaders from Yara's global markets. Qualitative tools: Atlas.ti for behavioral coding and pattern extraction, Zoom for remote interview facilitation. Quantitative tools: SPSS for inferential statistical modeling and cluster analysis, Statista for market benchmarking, and Microsoft Excel for data structuring. The program operated as a parallel hybrid methodology — qualitative and quantitative phases running simultaneously rather than sequentially.
The Legacy Interface: What Wasn't Working
The original TankMix interface was structured around a country-selector entry point followed by a passive, scrollable product catalog — a navigation model inherited from desktop e-commerce conventions and applied without adaptation to a task-completion context used by farmers in active field conditions. Users were required to browse an undifferentiated list of agrochemical products with no active search functionality, no cross-compatibility indicators, and no mixing guidance. The core behavioral mismatch identified through research: farmers approach agrochemical decision-making as a goal-directed, confirmation-seeking task — not an exploratory browsing session. This structural misalignment between interface architecture and actual user behavioral patterns was generating abandonment at the exact decision point of highest commercial value.
Defining Research Objectives & Hybrid Research Plan
I initiated three global alignment meetings with the innovation team followed by regional sessions with each incubator manager to define and iterate the research objectives — translating both business needs and user needs into specific, measurable research variables incorporated into the Design Sprint structure. The research plan applied a hybrid approach: qualitative and quantitative phases separated in methodology but running simultaneously in time. The qualitative phase applied Field Studies and in-depth User Interviews under structured questionnaire guidance segmented by variable. The quantitative phase applied descriptive statistics and a cluster-type analysis in SPSS and Statista at a 97% confidence level, building sociodemographic user profiles from engineering-provided usage data — an inverse research process that constructed personas from statistical clusters rather than from assumed demographic segments.
Qualitative & Quantitative Phase Integration
The qualitative phase pursued three parallel objectives: categorizing the core values of each product by market context; reviewing the customer journey to identify necessary but non-existent features in the current application; and applying structured interview protocols segmented by research variable. The quantitative phase required accessing engineering-side usage data — since the innovation team did not hold technical knowledge about user demographics and target user characteristics had not been defined from a socio-demographic perspective. The integration between phases produced cross-validated findings — qualitative behavioral patterns confirmed or challenged by statistical modeling, and statistical correlations contextualized by ethnographic observation. The primary statistical finding challenged the assumption that regional UI variations would be required per market, supporting instead the decision to build a unified interface architecture with contextual adaptations.
Project Execution
Project execution was structured across parallel tracks — research operations, stakeholder alignment, and design sprint facilitation running concurrently throughout the 20-week engagement. Research operations covered participant recruitment, interview execution, real-time data analysis, and iterative synthesis. Stakeholder alignment was maintained through weekly progress meetings with the innovation and design teams, in which partial findings were presented and incorporated into ongoing sprint activities. Design sprint facilitation ensured that research findings directly activated product decisions rather than being delivered as a final report after design work had concluded.
Participant Recruitment Strategy
I took the initiative to consult directly with Yara's sales department about leveraging their existing customer network for participant recruitment — proposing less than 30-minute interview sessions with active TankMix users at the farm level. This approach eliminated the behavioral artificiality common in panel-recruited participants, since each user entered the study with an active commercial relationship and genuine product usage context. The recruitment achieved a 10/10 success rate — all targeted participants completed the full protocol with zero dropout and zero additional recruitment cost to the project, as participants were either volunteers or part of the stakeholder network's contribution to the research program.
Conducting Cross-Cultural Depth Interviews
Nine in-depth interviews were conducted across multiple markets at different organizational levels — including farmers, sales managers, and product vendors — to capture behavioral patterns across the full user ecosystem. Interviews with sales managers and product vendors identified the first functional requirements through hypothetical scenarios about their customers' actual needs. User-level interviews were conducted at a pace of two sessions per day, with real-time data extraction and analysis in Atlas.ti integrated into the daily workflow. Each interview was analyzed individually, with notes taken in lieu of video recording to respect participant comfort and accelerate the analysis cycle. The process produced a categorized inventory of current functionalities ranked by relevance alongside a list of necessary-but-absent features identified as redesign priorities by both users and product managers.
Data Analysis & Communicating Results
Data analysis operated on two parallel tracks matching the hybrid methodology. Qualitative analysis applied thematic coding in Atlas.ti across all interview sessions, producing a behavioral pattern map identifying convergent and divergent decision-making behaviors across markets. Quantitative analysis applied cluster-type descriptive statistics in SPSS and Statista, building sociodemographic user profiles from engineering-provided usage data. Results were communicated progressively: weekly meetings presented partial findings as they emerged; the design team participated in interview observations with a bias-reduction workshop conducted beforehand; Miro served as the shared digital workspace; and a final 40-slide self-contained report was delivered to the VP of UX, structured for independent consultation after the researcher's engagement concluded.
Research Impacts for Redesign
The research produced a direct translation from behavioral findings to UI architecture decisions. The before-and-after comparison illustrates the core transformation: from a passive product catalog requiring users to browse an undifferentiated list, to an active search interface with a multi-product simultaneous mixing capability — the Search Field for combining up to 6 products simultaneously, producing immediate TankMix results from a single search action. My contribution covered four areas: design of the research study and planning of execution phases across markets; identification of participants and proposal of the zero-cost recruitment approach; methodological design of the data collection tools including the comparative questionnaire and statistical relevance analysis; and synthesis of findings into the 4-step behavioral journey model adopted as the cross-platform redesign blueprint.
Results & Stakeholder Communication
Stakeholder communication was structured as a continuous process rather than a final event. Weekly progress meetings presented partial findings as they emerged from the field, allowing design sprint activities to incorporate research in real time. The design team participated in interview observation sessions, with a bias-reduction workshop conducted beforehand to prevent generalization of individual findings. Miro served as the shared digital workspace where application screens, behavioral observations, and emerging patterns were documented and made accessible to all team members. The final deliverable was a 40-slide PowerPoint presentation delivered to the VP of UX, structured with segmented findings by objective type in tables designed for simple reading and independent consultation after the researcher's engagement concluded.
Global Product Manager Recommendations
The research program and its outcomes were validated by three senior stakeholders across the engagement:
Yanire Ramos, Incubation Regional Lead at Yara UK and Ireland: "Working with Miguel on the design of Tankmix was a key experience in building a truly user-centric product. His focus on design research and his ability to extract relevant insights were essential in the design and validation process. His ability to structure research helped define a stronger value proposition and optimize the user experience. Without a doubt, someone I would work with again."
Oriol Thor, General Manager at Gamma UX, Barcelona: "We gratefully acknowledge Miguel Palau as a highly competent and compromised UX Researcher. During its time in Gamma UX, it has demonstrated its ability to realize high-calibration user studies and make intelligent and rapid decisions. It is safe to say that it will be a valid asset for your team."
Remi Delcaillau, Incubation Regional Market Lead at Yara France: "I really enjoyed working with Miguel, as I particularly appreciated his dedication, rigor, attention to detail and methodology, as well as his open mind and capacity of empathy with the people he interacts with."
The Redesigned TankMix
The redesigned TankMix application — publicly available on the App Store and Google Play — reflects the direct implementation of research findings into product architecture. The active search capability, multi-product mixing functionality, and unified interface structure validated through this research program are now live features serving a global user base of farmers and agrochemical technicians worldwide. This research program demonstrates how hybrid mixed-methods UX research, grounded in cross-cultural behavioral analysis and inferential statistical modeling, can translate directly into product innovation at global scale. The foundational theoretical lens applied throughout this work derives from the Dissonant Imagination framework — a generative research model developed for cross-cultural design contexts.
© 2025 Miguel Palau. All rights reserved.
This case study is an original work produced by Miguel Palau, Anthropologist, during his role at Yara International. The purpose of this publication is demonstrative and academic, in compliance with applicable legal and confidentiality requirements.
It is part of an ongoing research initiative specializing in cross-cultural UX research, hybrid mixed-methods methodologies, behavioral product strategy, and design anthropology applied to global digital products.
The methodological contributions presented
here — including the 4-step behavioral journey model and cross-cultural product
differential analysis — were developed by the author during his engagement with
Yara International and are presented for demonstrative and academic purposes
only. Any reproduction, citation, adaptation, or redistribution requires
explicit written credit to the author and a direct link to this publication.
Commercial use without permission is prohibited.
Citation
Palau, M. (2025). Designing Across Cultures: A Hybrid UX Research Case
for TankMix — Cross-Cultural UX Research and Behavioral Product Strategy for a
Global AgriTech Platform. Retrieved from: https://miguelpalau.blogspot.com/2025/07/an-hybrid-ux-global-research-tankmix.html
Keywords Hybrid UX Research · Cross-Cultural Behavioral Analysis
· AgriTech UX · Design Anthropology · Mixed-Methods Research · Behavioral
Journey Model · Design Sprint · UI Redesign · Product Strategy · Ethnographic
Research · Human-Centered Design · Global UX · Yara International · TankMix ·
Principal UX Researcher · Miguel Palau
About Me
Explore more work on design anthropology, cross-cultural UX strategy, and behavioral product research: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/miguelpalau
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