Glacier FarmMedia

Glacier FarmMedia is Canada's largest agricultural media company, owning 7+ publications that serve different farming audiences across the country — grain, livestock, machinery, regional news. Each publication has its own legacy digital presence.

I joined as the sole UX/UI designer. Over 3.5 years, I've shipped two native apps to the App Store, each solving a different problem: AgCanada unifies content across the entire network into a personalized experience, and Western Producer's anniversary game turned 100 years of journalism into an interactive daily challenge.

Both products were designed and shipped with a single developer. Both required deep domain expertise — understanding crop cycles, market timing, rural connectivity constraints, and an audience that values function over novelty.

Designing for agriculture is not like designing for tech. Farmers value function over form. They access tools in the cab of a combine, on rural broadband, between chores at 5 AM. A bad redesign doesn't just lose engagement — it loses trust built over decades.

The company needed someone who could learn the domain first, then design within its constraints — low bandwidth, high information density, users resistant to change, and regulatory landscapes unique to agricultural media. I was that designer, working with one developer to ship products that Canadian farmers actually use.