Project New Village Farming Tool

Design Problem: People in community gardens like Project New Village need a way to quickly:

Access information such as farming techniques and crop yield
Organize their gardens
Get help from experts

so they can expand local food sources within the community.

"Let the healthiest option be the easiest option!"

Stakeholder Interviews

&

User Research

01 / Our team interviewed the head of the garden and the lead farmer to ask what they envisioned, needed, and wanted from us as designers

02 / Secondly, we then interviewed those who had personal plots within the garden and asked similar questions of what they think they would find useful and helpful

Community Problems

FOOD INSECURITY

LACK OF ACCESS TO NUTRITIOUS PRODUCE

HEALTH DISPARITY

Community Solution

IMPROVE FRESH FOOD ACCESS IN SOUTHEASTERN SAN DIEGO

BUILD SOCIAL EQUITY

GIVE WAY TO HEALTHY NEIGHBORHOODS

Primary Research

03 / First Interview Takeaways

Community Growth

Management

Sharing

When to Plant

Selling

Social Media

04 / Analysis of Needs

Booking System

Simple Interface

Calculated Yield

Community Outreach

"... at the end of the day, I wanna be able to tell a story about food abundance."

- Diane Moss, Project New Village Director

Secondary Research

05 / Comparing Existing Apps

As a team, we created a Pugh chart to compare existing farming apps that could cover these needs but each only covered one aspect and their scales were too big for a community garden.

06 / Yield Research

We found with the basic way gardeners would have to keep track of every yield they get to find a pattern which could take years. The United States department of agriculture, however, does this for you with additional crop info. If we can scrap this information and implement it into our app, then we can create an equation with average yield plus weights of other factors that affect the yield.

Prototyping & Wireframing

PROTOTYPE 1 : Build Your Own Garden

Receive the best results for optimal gardening based on the following variables:

01 / Plant Type

02 / Amount of seed or bulb

03 / Season

04 / Sunlight exposure

PROTOTYPE 2 : Forum

A way for the community to connect with each other:

01 / Ease communication between garden members, community members, and certified farmers

02 / Questions

03 / Sharing

PROTOTYPE 3 : Administration

An administration app geared directly for our community partner, and garden director:

01 / Help keep track of who owns which plot

02 / Keep track of owners information

03 / Keep track of community members and how many are coming in and how many own plots

Prototype Testing and Feedback

ROUND 1 : Students, Managers, and most importantly novice gardeners

Testing with these users would allow unbiased input about what may be obvious to us as the creators but not them.

Feedback included more clarity, organization (too much clutter), and a more attractive visual appearance overall.

ROUND 2 : Expected audience, users, and stakeholders - the members of Project New Village

Feedback included social media connection, allowing pictures, and compiling the apps, so they would only have to download one, rather than three.

Organizing our feedback

Our team created another Pugh Chart to consolidate our user feedback, so our final prototype would be better than our baseline for each criterion.

ACCESSIBILITY : Is it accessible by most of the community? Is it shareable with most of the community?

FLEXIBILITY : Does it allow for various user input/customization/personalization?

RESULTS/INFORMATION : Does this give the gardeners the information they need regarding yield and how/when to grow certain plants?

CONNECTIVITY : Does this connect to other platforms? Facebook, Instagram? Does it connect to the community/community events?

USER INTERFACE : Is it easy to navigate and to use?