In 2017, xarvio’s representatives found the perfect partner: a company with vast experience in native mobile development and the ability to provide premium software with short time-to-market deployment. Together with intive’s forward thinkers, BASF has created one of its signature digital products – the xarvio™ SCOUTING app, which makes farming more precise, efficient and sustainable.

The xarvio™ SCOUTING app presents a radically different take on modern-day agriculture. It allows farmers to identify weeds, determine and count insects in yellow traps, recognize plant diseases, analyze leaf-damage and check nitrogen status – simply by taking a smartphone picture. Additionally, app users can benefit from the data gathered by other farmers, and find out in advance whether any plant diseases are emerging nearby.

To kick-start the project, the xarvio team and intive’s UX Designers held a series of workshops to paint a clear picture of the possible goals. After a thorough review and analysis of the necessary requirements, high-level architecture plans were introduced, as well as UX guidelines and wireframes. The primary focus was to design a clear, intuitive and functional application that meets users’ needs.

When the vision was defined, four dedicated teams – one on xarvio’s side and three on intive’s – started working simultaneously on the software. To achieve the highest scalability, intive’s backend team followed the microservices approach. A complex, yet reliable backend infrastructure was built on Amazon Web Services.

intive’s frontend teams created intuitive iOS and Android applications that are easy-to-use and require no special devices or user knowledge.

The teams leveraged Swift and Kotlin for state-of-the-art native apps. A strong mobile development portfolio helped with designing user-friendly interfaces that make the digital farming experience even more satisfying. Additionally, a web-based back office app was created to allow data configuration and notification setting for xarvio™ SCOUTING. Appium was used to automate end-to-end user interface testing.