Grand Valley State University Grand Valley State University
ScholarWorks@GVSU ScholarWorks@GVSU
Technical Library School of Computing and Information Systems
2017
Migrant Farm Worker App – AgHelp! Migrant Farm Worker App – AgHelp!
Huang Xiaomei
Grand Valley State University
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Xiaomei, Huang, "Migrant Farm Worker App – AgHelp!" (2017).
Technical Library
. 273.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cistechlib/273
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Migrant Farmworker App – AgHelp!
By
Xiaomei Huang
April, 2017
Migrant Farmworker App – AgHelp!
By
Xiaomei Huang
A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science
in Computer Information Systems
at
Grand Valley State University
April, 2017
_______________________________________________________________________________
Jonathan R. Engelsma April, 2017
Table of Contents
ABSTRACT'...............................................................................................................................' 1!
INTRO D UCTIO N '.......................................................................................................................'2!
PROGRAM'REQUIREMENTS'.....................................................................................................' 3!
IMPLE MENTATION '..................................................................................................................'5!
RESULTS,'EVALUATION,'AND'REFLECTION'..............................................................................'12!
CONCLUSIONS'AND'FUTURE'WORK'........................................................................................'12!
BIBLIOGRAPHY'.......................................................................................................................'14!
1
Abstract
Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers (MSFWs) travel each year to help cultivate and
harvest crops in various regions of the United States. They often struggle to find
resources such as education, health care or legal services when they get to a new place.
On the other side, agencies with limited outreach budget also struggle to connect with
them. Meanwhile, growers pay thousands of dollars for recruiting farmworkers every
harvest season but often fail in finding enough laborers, while lots of unemployed
farmworkers are waiting.
To estimate the potential of using a mobile app to address this problem within the farm
worker community, we interviewed more than 70 farmworkers, agencies, and growers
through Grand Valley State University’s Customer Discovery Program in September
2016. We found a strong demand for a convenient and portable way to connect
farmworkers, agencies, and farmers to real-time information.
This project is to build a native mobile application named “AgHelp!” for iOS phone
users, written in Swift 3.x. It provides a platform for connecting migrant seasonal
farmworkers, agencies, growers, and potentially Mexican stores. Bringing these groups
together has never been done. “AgHelp!” will assist migrant farmworkers to locate
resources more conveniently and help growers find and retain laborers. It also will help
agencies locate seasonal workers who are not living in labor camps, and increase the
number of MSFWs served. The notification feature of this app will alert users about the
latest events, jobs, and news, so that it will help secure farmworkers’ jobs and lives when
they are traveling.
2
Introduction
Michigan’s agricultural industry relies on more than 94,000 migrant farmworkers to
hand-harvest more than 44 different crops every year. In 2014, more than $9 million in
revenue was lost due to a shortage in labor in the fruit industry alone. Currently,
farmworkers rely on word of mouth, fliers, or unscrupulous contractors to locate work
and shelter. For these mobile workers, the insecurity of not knowing the local area works
against them. They don’t always know where to find basic health care and educational
resources even if service providers are nearby. On the other side, agencies with limited
outreach also have difficulties in locating workers due to the workers’ mobility.
In September 2016, we participated in GVSU’s Customer Discovery Program, which was
focused on mapping out the market and stakeholders, identifying and understanding the
“pain points” of potential customers, and determining the best product-to-market fit.
Through this program, we interviewed more than 70 customers including farm workers,
growers, and agencies. The feedback we received from these interviews has been taken as
the main reference to design our app.
The goal of this app is to build a mobile platform that will connect farmworkers, growers,
and agencies. It will bring the mobile workforce to the growers who struggle to fill the
jobs, so that the loss in the agricultural industry can be minimized. Meanwhile, migrant
farmworkers will be able to locate resources more quickly and efficiently using a mobile
app, which will help them feel more secure traveling to Michigan. They can learn what
resources will be available to them, and be less susceptible to labor trafficking and
exploitation. Workers will also be able to maximize their hard-earned pay and obtain
much-needed support services throughout the season. The app will help growers
streamline the recruiting process by easily posting positions or anything associated with
the jobs. Last but not least, AgHelp! will assist service providers to locate seasonal
workers not living in labor camps, and notify farmworkers when they enter an area. The
service providers will be able to receive more funding by serving more workers.
3
Program Requirements
The first goal of this app is to provide the best user experience and performance, so a
native approach was adopted. IOS and Android version will be developed sequentially. In
this program, the scope is limited to the iOS version using Swift 3.x.
The key features provided by this app are:
Ø “Contact” Tab:
• Provide more than 5,000 service providers’ information.
• Search function allows users to easily locate providers by category, current
location, or keywords.
• Save function lets users find important contacts even when they don’t have
Internet access.
• Providers’ business pages and post lists
• Map, navigation, and in-app calling functions
Ø “Job” Tab:
• Users can easily find jobs by state.
• Users can receive new job notifications based on their interested locations.
• Growers can post jobs with one click.
• Simplified job application procedure
• Efficient applicant management
Ø “Hub” Tab:
• Official account can post fliers, news, events, jobs, and notify farmworkers.
• Share, save posts.
• Follow providers’ updates.
• Register for upcoming events.
• Apply for new jobs.
Ø “Notification” Tab:
• In-app notifications on new jobs, new applicants, job status changes, updates of
following events, emergency alerts, et al.
4
• Alert On / Off options
Ø “Home” Tab:
• User roles: Basic user and official user
• Business card
• Management of applied jobs, planned events, and saved posts
• Advance management panel for official accounts.
5
Implementation
This project is implemented using Xcode, Swift 3.0, following Apple’s standard
guidelines. The package manager Cocopods was used for facilitation.
Pods used are:
Pods
Purpose
Google/Analytics
Track application events you care about and gain insights from
discovery and installation to conversion and engagement.
Eureka
Elegant iOS forms
Parse
Access to Parse cloud platform
1. User interface design and user experience
Once the system requirements were determined, a prototype was created on a large
portion of the system. It helped to define the system scope visually and generate some
new ideas when evaluating them. Initially, the contents of the app were separated into
five sections: Contact, Job, Event, Notifications, Home. A tab bar provides a good way to
flatten the information hierarchy and provide access to several peer information
categories at once.
Sketch was used for the graphic design. It can show in every fiber of the app:
6
“InVision” is another useful tool to make the design more efficient. There is a plugin in
Sketch called “Craft” that allows syncing all designs to InVision. Once the files are
uploaded to InVision, animations, gestures and transitions can be added to transform their
static screens into clickable, interactive prototypes. It is a nice tool to collect feedback
from the stakeholders and improve the user experience design.
Figure 1 – User interface design by Sketch
7
Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop were used for icon design.
2. User engagement and user login
Unregistered users are allowed to view service providers’ information, job news, etc. But
if they want to apply for jobs, subscribe to notifications or post news, users will be asked
to register and log in. There are two levels of user authorities: basic account and official
account. In order to prevent mendacious news spreading, only official accounts will be
allowed to post jobs and news.
Figure 2 – AgHelp! Screens
Figure 3 – AgHelp! App icon
8
Pushing notifications is one of the key features of this app. There are five types of
notifications offered in this app: 1, Notifications on job updates from any states that the
user is interested in; 2, Notifications on news or jobs from any official account the user is
following; 3, Notifications on new applicants for jobs the growers posted (official
accounts only); 4, Notifications on applied job status changes to applicants; 5, System
notifications. These features are implemented by third party API Integration.
3. Use of location data
Migrant farmworkers travel across the country. It is essential for them to get location-
based information. A current-location based search function offered in this app can help
them locate the nearby resources much easier. Geopoints from parse server plays an
important role for this purpose. By adding service providers’ PFGeoPoint to a PFObject
allows queries to take into account the proximity of an object to a reference point. This
allows users to easily find resources nearby.
4. Parse server and data storage
Parse Server is the open source version of Parse that is supported by a strong community
of open-source developers. It can be self hosted by users. It uses MongoDB to store data
and stores files in JSON format as a backup. It supports cloud code and push
notifications, has no file-storage restrictions, and provides control over backup, restore,
and database indexes. All of these features make it one of the best platforms to develop
new iOS or Android apps or API’s.
Considering that farmworkers might not have Internet connection when they’re traveling
or working in the field, this app needs to allow users to find providers’ information
offline. A Parse local datastore feature lets the data be pinned to the local and be accessed
anytime without Internet requirement. UserDefaults is also used for keeping the app data
persistence.
5. Cloud code and app security
9
Unlike client code running on users' devices that may have been tampered with, Cloud
code is guaranteed to be the code that you've written, so it can be trusted with more
responsibility. ‘BeforeSave’ triggers in cloud code and is used to validate user inputs. It
can also be used to prevent record duplication.
Cloud code is also used for sending push notifications. In general, clients can't be trusted
to send push notifications directly; because they could modify the alert text, or push to
people they should not be able to. So cloud code function is necessary to validate the data
before sending a push.
Figure 4 – Example of ‘beforeSave’ Cloud code
10
Background jobs in Parse server allow users to schedule Parse server cloud code
functions to be executed at periodic intervals. Background jobs can run seamlessly in the
background without user input, so it helps to reduce manual effort. For example, we keep
user notifications on the server for two weeks. Since these messages are time-based, it’s
not necessary to keep them forever. Background jobs can be used to clear these out-of-
date records from the server.
Figure 5 – Example of using Cloud code to push notification
11
Figure 5 – Example of background job
12
Results, Evaluation, and Reflection
This app was fully implemented by the end of March, 2017 and has submitted for
TestFlight Beta Testing. By April 18, 2017, 30 agencies were enrolled to test the app and
more will be coming in. The beta testing will carry on for around 50 days. Then this app
is expected to launch at Apple store by the end of June, 2017.
To assess the app performance and user behaviors, Google Analytics is utilized.
Conclusions and Future Work
This app has caught the attention of many people who work in agriculture and technology
commercialization. Vegetable Growers News, the No. 1 choice among the nation's
vegetable growers for industry news and information, stated that the app “provides the
opportunity to find resources they need right at their fingertips. .... This is a very high-
value population that comes into our region, and we’re happy to have them here. They’re
providing an invaluable service to be sure to conduct our local food harvest properly. It
becomes a democratization of that industry – allowing the grower to be able to access
people, and people to access growers.”
During the Customer Discovery Program, we noticed that the farmworkers are mainly
using Android phones. So the Android version is the most priority to develop after the
iOS version.
Another plan for future work is providing a Web portal for official users. This will help
them to manage posts and job applicants more conveniently.
There is still a lot of work to be done, such as allowing farmworkers to rate the service
providers, and report occupational injury or abuse. Or even have a button for emergency
help. I hope this app could really help people in need in the near future!
13
Acknowledgment:
First of all, I would like to sincerely acknowledge my advisor, Professor Engelsma, for
his encouragement and guidance, without which this app would not have been developed.
I thank Mr. Feliciano Paredes, who brought this brilliant idea for building this app.
Thanks for all the efforts he has made to help farmworkers and others.
I also thank Dr. Linda Chamberlain for offering the opportunity of the Customer
Discovery Program and helping us building the business model.
Finally, I am eternally grateful to my husband, my two lovely children, my parents, my
friends, and my teachers at GVSU. Your love and support keep me moving forward!
Thank you indeed!
Tools:
1. Xcode
2. Sublime
3. CocoPod
4. Sketch
5. Adobe illustrator
6. Adobe Photoshop
7. InVision
8. iTunesConnect / TestFlight
Programming languages:
1. Swift
2. JavaScript
14
Bibliography
1. Parse server. IOS guide. http://docs.parseplatform.org/ios/guide/
2. Simon Ng, Intermediate iOS 10 Programming with Swift, https://www.appcoda.com/
3. https://www.raywenderlich.com
4. Apple developer guidelines, https://developer.apple.com/app-store/guidelines/
5. The Swift Programming Language, Swift 3.1 edition,
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-swift-programming-language-swift-3-
1/id881256329?mt=11
6. Vegetable Growers News, April 2017, volume 51, issue 4
