RipeWise is a collaboration between Experience Fruit Quality and De Laat Koudetechniek, aimed at supporting fruit ripening experts in ripening exotic fruit the right way, as part of the MIT subsidy process concerning RipeWise, funded by the province of Gelderland.

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Ask

Experience Fruit Quality had an initial version of the RipeWise software. Technically sound and conceptually in the right direction.They wanted to capture manual actions and decisions in a meaningful way, so valuable expertise would no longer remain implicit but become shared data the organisation could learn from. However adoption was a challenge. 

They asked fresk.digital to look at the product from a human centred perspective and help answer a crucial question: how do you design a digital tool that ripening experts actually want to use? And will choose over working purely on intuition, without losing their sense of ownership or craftsmanship.

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Answer

We quickly saw that the core challenge was not technical, but human.

This project wasn’t about what data could be shown, but about how ripening experts actually think, decide and work under daily pressure, or: How do you make a complex, adaptive process transparent, scalable and shareable, without losing the quality that depends so heavily on professional judgement?‍

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‍‍Our answer was a shift in perspective. Instead of designing around what data could be shown, we reframed RipeWise as a learning system that supports anticipation and decisionmaking. One that helps ripeners look ahead, understand context and gradually turn experience into actionable insights, without taking ownership away from the expert.

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Way of working

Throughout the project, we worked in close collaboration with stakeholders through weekly check-ins and validation moments. We applied our Discover & Strategise (D&S) approach, structured around three closely connected phases.

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Understand

We started by immersing ourselves in the world of ripening experts. Alongside stakeholder interviews with Experience Fruit Quality and fruit suppliers, we mostly spent time on the work floor, in and around the ripening cells. There, we observed how ripeners balance supply and demand for a natural product that constantly changes, how decisions are made under uncertainty, and how much pressure this creates for the teams around them.

One insight stood out clearly: ripeners are primarily focused on what will happen next. While the existing RipeWise interface mainly showed what had already happened, their real need was prediction, context and expected outcomes.

As one highly experienced ripener put it:

“It’s a shame we don’t log more of what we do, that’s information I could use later.”‍

That sentence captured the essence of RipeWise: valuable expertise was being applied every day, but rarely captured in a way others could learn from.

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Shape

From this research, we identified the core challenge we later named adaptive ripening. Ripeners continuously adapt their strategy based on logistics, customer requirements and external factors, while working with a product that behaves differently every time.

Information needed to do this well was scattered, constantly changing and often not recorded, making knowledge difficult to share or scale. Based on these insights, we helped define which information truly matters, why it matters, and how it should support daily decisionmaking. Rather than adding more data, we focused on clarity: prioritising information, reducing cognitive load.

Scope

The outcome of our work was a clear concept for RipeWise: a support tool for adaptive ripening that helps experts look ahead divided in three phases:

• Visualise: RipeWise maps out the ripening process, showing the needed delivery date. It provides a clear, real-time overview of where the product is in the process and when it reaches the different ripening stages. 
• Guide: RipeWise offers the ripener new insights. It suggests several ripening options based on product and timing. It sharpens predictions and provides updates during ripening, helping experts to adjust the process for optimal results.‍
• Act: RipeWise offers suggestions, but the ripening expert always makes the final call.

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Result

The most important result was a shift in perspective. By placing ripening experts at the centre, RipeWise evolved from a technical monitoring tool into a system that learns from its users. Ripeners are no longer just operators, but contributors to the intelligence of the platform.

This resulted in a validated product direction, translated into a tangible Figma prototype and a reusable component library. Together, these artefacts form an actionable digital strategy that Experience Fruit Quality’s development team continues to build on.
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The foundation is now in place to make ripening knowledge less dependent on individuals and more scalable across teams. By focusing on prediction, shared context and future outcomes, RipeWise supports better alignment between ripening, planning and commercial decisionmaking, all while preserving the craftsmanship that makes the difference.

The result is a product direction that feels more intuitive, more human and more valuable: for the experts in the ripening cells, and for the business behind them.