Product Shot, Introduction & Value Proposition
Plants That Talk, a system for communicating crop health, anthropomorphizing the health of a user's garden and informing the user what steps they need to take to have an optimally healthy garden while engineering ownership, promoting self-sustainability and strengthening a connection to nature.
"Helping gardeners understand exactly what their garden needs"
"Helping gardeners understand exactly what their garden needs"
Who Would Use This Product?
Motivation
Our primary motivation through the design process was to create something usable and useful aligned with the values, goals and motivations or our users. Through synthesizing information from an exhaustive formative study (see below), we galvanized around the following design motivations:
To expand, we wanted to design with empathy and ensure that our design would help strengthen user values rather than detract from them, especially with respect to users' sense of ownership (e.g., the joy of taking care of something), connection to nature, developing expertise and aesthetics.
In addition to our motivations, we also established the following design goals:
- reinforce user values
- reassure unsure gardeners
- inspire and empower gardeners
- reduce learning curve for first-time gardeners
- create technology that feel like gardening
To expand, we wanted to design with empathy and ensure that our design would help strengthen user values rather than detract from them, especially with respect to users' sense of ownership (e.g., the joy of taking care of something), connection to nature, developing expertise and aesthetics.
In addition to our motivations, we also established the following design goals:
- Useful and usable - people want to spend their time gardening, not setting up overly complicated systems
- Have a system that talks to the user. As multiple interviewees expressed, "I wish my plants could talk to me to tell me what they need"
- Empower the user and help them transition from amateur to expert gardeners
Key Insights
Prior to the creation of this system, the design team conducted a multi-faceted formative study aimed at uncovering who the target audience is and what the needs are of that audience. Furthermore, research conducted was centered around the following facets:
Formative Study Methods:
Though research unveiled a wide array of findings, below are the ones that were given the highest priority and focus throughout the design process:
Users...
And things important to our users as gardeners are:
Prototype Findings:
Through the prototyping process we unveiled a few opportunities to improve our system. Though we had accurately read soil information and displayed that to our user, we also realized that it could disrupt the flow state for some users to have to water, check the app, water, check the app and so forth. As such, we could develop an ambient light mechanism on the sensor itself that would show "distressed" and "addressed" states. For instance, if the user checked the app and saw that their plant needed more water, they could go to the plant and then the light on the sensor would change from orange to blue as the user provided the appropriate amount of water to their crop (or alternatively the light could be on if the plant needed something and off if the plant was in optimal growing conditions).
Another consideration unveiled in the prototyping process was what to do in the event of rain or other weather events. As our system is currently designed, the app could tell a user to water the plants only for there to be a large rain storm later that day, resulting in over-watering of the crops. Because of this, our final system should include a weather API that can provide contextual notifications to the user ensuring that they are taking the most optimal steps given the condition of their plants and the local weather conditions.
Continual monitoring drains the sensor's battery life quickly. As such, we discussed having the sensors be user-activated to conserve this battery life as best possible. The actual measurement would only happen automatically once a day and then by request upon the user. This does have some trade-offs in that by-the-minute updates are not possible limiting the idea of notifications; however, as users mentioned they would check the system like they check the weather (once per day) this should not be an issue. If we later discover a need (user-driven or hardware-driven) that the devices should collection information more regularly, we could equip the system with solar panels to continually recharge the devices, albiet at a higher cost.
Lastly, we discovered that issues can arise with the sensors themselves and there should be a physical port where users can update firmware manually if needed. Any and all updates should happen wirelessly, but a port should exist in the event of a worst-case scenario.
How does Plants That Talk meet goals formulated through research?
- uncover the values of gardeners
- understand motivations
- know what a day-in-the-life of a garden entails
- identify constraints and threats facing gardeners
- identify the boundaries users have with automation, information overload and level of detail vs abstractness of information
- understand whether users would want direct notifications or want information that is available to check
Formative Study Methods:
- qualitative 1:1 interviews with 6 users (5 amateur and 1 expert gardener)
- asking those users to participate in a photo diary to get a thorough understanding of their gardening space and habits
- guerrilla interviews at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market
- secondary research on places like r/gardening
- user enactments aimed at testing the boundaries of abstraction, frequency of information, animism, automation and comfort with digital interactions
Though research unveiled a wide array of findings, below are the ones that were given the highest priority and focus throughout the design process:
Users...
- want to assess what is happening in their garden - "I wish my plants could talk to me."
- want to know how specifically to respond to the needs of their garden - "this is great, but what do I do with it?"
- prefer daily communication for notification systems - "I would want to check this information each day the way I check the weather."
- do not want fully automated systems as that interferes with their values and motivations for gardening - "where’s the fun in that?"
- value the work and attentiveness that goes into gardening and enjoy the sensation of taking care of something
- have near infinite configurations for their gardens and any system designed for gardening should be highly flexible to accommodate various plants, types of growing spaces and sizes of those growing spaces
- feel even more emotionally connected to their gardens when presented with a cute cartoon caricature representing the health of their plants
And things important to our users as gardeners are:
- Values: ownership, being green, aesthetically pleasing, social sharing, nostalgia, relaxation, developing expertise
- Motivations: utilize space for productive purposes, connect to nature, hobby/passion, gardening as a time for personal reflection, practicing self-sustainability, environmentalism, social aspects
- Constraints: time, budget, lack of expertise/knowledge, self-doubt
Prototype Findings:
Through the prototyping process we unveiled a few opportunities to improve our system. Though we had accurately read soil information and displayed that to our user, we also realized that it could disrupt the flow state for some users to have to water, check the app, water, check the app and so forth. As such, we could develop an ambient light mechanism on the sensor itself that would show "distressed" and "addressed" states. For instance, if the user checked the app and saw that their plant needed more water, they could go to the plant and then the light on the sensor would change from orange to blue as the user provided the appropriate amount of water to their crop (or alternatively the light could be on if the plant needed something and off if the plant was in optimal growing conditions).
Another consideration unveiled in the prototyping process was what to do in the event of rain or other weather events. As our system is currently designed, the app could tell a user to water the plants only for there to be a large rain storm later that day, resulting in over-watering of the crops. Because of this, our final system should include a weather API that can provide contextual notifications to the user ensuring that they are taking the most optimal steps given the condition of their plants and the local weather conditions.
Continual monitoring drains the sensor's battery life quickly. As such, we discussed having the sensors be user-activated to conserve this battery life as best possible. The actual measurement would only happen automatically once a day and then by request upon the user. This does have some trade-offs in that by-the-minute updates are not possible limiting the idea of notifications; however, as users mentioned they would check the system like they check the weather (once per day) this should not be an issue. If we later discover a need (user-driven or hardware-driven) that the devices should collection information more regularly, we could equip the system with solar panels to continually recharge the devices, albiet at a higher cost.
Lastly, we discovered that issues can arise with the sensors themselves and there should be a physical port where users can update firmware manually if needed. Any and all updates should happen wirelessly, but a port should exist in the event of a worst-case scenario.
How does Plants That Talk meet goals formulated through research?
- Anthropomorphic representations of the crops a user has planted helps engineer and strengthen emotional attachment to the garden (connection to nature)
- System of information gathering and communication allows plants to talk to their gardeners
- Unobtrusive design and no/low automation allows users to do the work themselves, only armed with more knowledge of what work should be done
- Helps engineer confidence that gardeners are taking the appropriate actions necessary to care for their garden
Final System Concept
Our system works with a hub and sensor approach, where individual sensors collect data about crops a user has planted in a garden (one sensor per crop, such as carrots, beets, rhubarb, etc.) and then those sensors transfer soil information to a central hub. That hub then communicates that information to a cloud-based database via the user's home WiFi connection. From there, that information can be accessed through a smartphone application, ultimately informing the user what actions they need to take in order to have a healthy garden while also helping strengthen the attachment a user has to their garden.
System includes:
Key Features:
A video demoing the application's animations
System includes:
- A central hub that will collect information from individual satellites
- Individual satellites will be included in Plants That Talk seed packages (purchasable online or through Home & Garden stores)
- A smartphone application that will serve as a presentation and interactive layer for conveying information about the garden to the user
Key Features:
- measures and communicates vital information regarding crop health
- plug and play system that is flexible for any garden or situation
- anthropomorphizes plant information to engineer connection and empathy
- provides contextual tips, empowering the user and engineering expertise
A video demoing the application's animations
High Level System Architecture:
Smartphone Application Mockup:
Product Website Mockup:
Refined Product Icon/Logo:
Experience Video
Prototype Shots & Key Features
We prototyped the soil sensor and key interactions of the smartphone application.
Specifically, the prototype:
Specifically, the prototype:
- Reads light and moisture levels of soil
- Uploads that information to Firebase (cloud-based database)
- Pulls that data off the cloud and display it to the user via our mobile phone application built using Framer, both in traditional data visualization format and as an anthropomorphic representation (e.g., a carrot will look happy or sad depending on the level of light and moisture it has)
- Communicates a use case (friend sees his plants need attending, calls his friend to have him water his plants, then gets confirmation his plants have the moisture they need)
Ideal System Proposal
An easy-to-install, elegant information gathering system that displays contextual information to the user, helping them both manage their garden as well as learn how to take care of their garden more effectively. To do this, our ideal system should include:
- Sensors: Have individual sensors (one per crop) collect hydration, pH, temperature, humidity and light information.
- Hub: Sensors communicate to a central hub that then relays that information into the cloud via the user's home WiFi.
- Presentation Layer: A smartphone application that shows the user contextual and up-to-date information about their garden using cute, anthropomorphic cartoon representations of their crops.
- Local Weather Context: Include a weather API so the user knows what to do for their crop given their local weather.
- Offer Tips: System should provide tips about how to care for their garden. For instance, "the ideal soil for growing carrots is between 5.5 and 7.5; your pH level is too acidic at 4.5. You should can add calcitic or dolomitic lime (five to 10 pounds per 100 square feet to increase pH by one level) or wood ashes (two pounds per 100 square feet of soil) from a fireplace to increase alkalinity of your soil for tastier carrots."
- Ambient Light: A light on each sensor would activate when that plant needed care and would disappear as the user provided the appropriate amount of water to their crop, preventing the need to look back and forth between the garden and app while also not interfering with the aesthetics of the garden. Light represents something to address and remove with the user restoring the natural beauty of their garden when the needs of their plants are met (e.g., lights turn off when watered properly).
- Feel Like Gardening: Installation of the system should feel similar to actually gardening (getting your hands dirty, putting the devices into the soil, etc.).
- Service Design: An online community page similar to https://www.thingiverse.com/ or other analogous sites where users can share information about their gardens, set ups and receive assistance as necessary. Plants That Talk will also staff a few expert gardeners to publish articles and add the voice-of-the-expert to the overall user experience package.
Reflection
Next Steps
As we have already demonstrated that the technology works, the remaining steps center around refinement, scale, aesthetics, fleshing out the experience and advancing a go-to market strategy. Our plan includes:
Design Limitations
Note: New insights learned through prototyping articulated above under Key Insights
As we have already demonstrated that the technology works, the remaining steps center around refinement, scale, aesthetics, fleshing out the experience and advancing a go-to market strategy. Our plan includes:
- Demo the system using multiple sensors
- Work on a "sleep mode" for the devices to conserve battery and/or add solar panels
- Implement ambient light sensors
- Prototype and ultimately construct the hub (device right now has both hub and sensor combined)
- Complete the app; that is, fully realize the app with weather API plug in, contextual tips and install/setup/reconfigure steps
- Improve the aesthetics of the product and smartphone app
- Recruit test users and conduct a diary study during spring 2017 to identify what works or does not work
- Conduct estimation to see what full production costs for a 1st generation run as well as estimate the cost of database fees, expert writers and website fees
- Potentially scrap the pH sensors unless the cost reduces in the near future
- Begin construction of the website to help support service design
- Conduct a 360 evaluation of both product and service designs through usability testing, focus groups and heuristic analyses to inform the final round of revisions before initial launch
- Identify go-to market strategies, specifically price points and when/where this would be sold
- Explore Kickstarter to raise funds to meet the costs identified above
- Depending on Kickstarter success, place orders and coordinate logistics to put the product in the hands of consumers as well as go live with the website, prioritizing product support and then scaling up to forums
- Install measures within the app and website to collect information, allowing Plants That Talk to understand real-world behaviors and make necessary adjustments in future hardware and software revisions based off that data
Design Limitations
- Some users discussed that gardening was an outlet for social interaction, that they had someone they enjoyed gardening with or liked sharing tips and tricks. Though this could be realized on the website component discussed under the ideal design, the core experience does not address this.
- Users mentioned cost as a constraint and our system may be unaffordable for some.
- pH sensors were more expensive than anticipated and that feature may have to be dropped from the design.
- Some users said that it would be nice if the system could automatically water their plants in the event they were out of town or stuck working late. Though considered, this feature was dropped in an effort to curtail scope creep and bloating the design.
- The system requires that users have home WiFi and a smartphone. Though these are growing in popularity, it still means that not all people that could benefit from the system would be able to use it.
- Though the system is designed to be easy to install, familiarity with technology is a requirement for implmentation of the system.
Note: New insights learned through prototyping articulated above under Key Insights