Explainability Needs in Agriculture: Exploring Dairy Farmers' User Personas

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Girmay, Mengisti Berihu, Droste, Jakob, Deters, Hannah, Doerr, Joerg
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866918144775290880
author Girmay, Mengisti Berihu
Droste, Jakob
Deters, Hannah
Doerr, Joerg
author_facet Girmay, Mengisti Berihu
Droste, Jakob
Deters, Hannah
Doerr, Joerg
contents Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises new opportunities across many domains, including agriculture. However, the adoption of AI systems in this sector faces several challenges. System complexity can impede trust, as farmers' livelihoods depend on their decision-making and they may reject opaque or hard-to-understand recommendations. Data privacy concerns also pose a barrier, especially when farmers lack transparency regarding who can access their data and for what purposes. This paper examines dairy farmers' explainability requirements for technical recommendations and data privacy, along with the influence of socio-demographic factors. Based on a mixed-methods study involving 40 German dairy farmers, we identify five user personas through k-means clustering. Our findings reveal varying requirements, with some farmers preferring little detail while others seek full transparency across different aspects. Age, technology experience, and confidence in using digital systems were found to correlate with these explainability requirements. The resulting user personas offer practical guidance for requirements engineers aiming to tailor digital systems more effectively to the diverse requirements of farmers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_16249
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Explainability Needs in Agriculture: Exploring Dairy Farmers' User Personas
Girmay, Mengisti Berihu
Droste, Jakob
Deters, Hannah
Doerr, Joerg
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises new opportunities across many domains, including agriculture. However, the adoption of AI systems in this sector faces several challenges. System complexity can impede trust, as farmers' livelihoods depend on their decision-making and they may reject opaque or hard-to-understand recommendations. Data privacy concerns also pose a barrier, especially when farmers lack transparency regarding who can access their data and for what purposes. This paper examines dairy farmers' explainability requirements for technical recommendations and data privacy, along with the influence of socio-demographic factors. Based on a mixed-methods study involving 40 German dairy farmers, we identify five user personas through k-means clustering. Our findings reveal varying requirements, with some farmers preferring little detail while others seek full transparency across different aspects. Age, technology experience, and confidence in using digital systems were found to correlate with these explainability requirements. The resulting user personas offer practical guidance for requirements engineers aiming to tailor digital systems more effectively to the diverse requirements of farmers.
title Explainability Needs in Agriculture: Exploring Dairy Farmers' User Personas
topic Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16249