Introduction
Restate your research questions.
Briefly describe your UEs.
Reflect on what’ve you learned from this initial UEs study.
- We want to test the boundaries of system automation and proactivity in order to assess how comfortable individuals are with a system taking care of certain tasks. More specifically:
- Would high levels of automatization interfere with user values of ownership and connection to nature?
- Would users be more comfortable tending to their gardens themselves or would they be more comfortable having a system do those tasks for them?
- How much automation are users comfortable with regarding the watering?
- When does information about the plant health levels become excessive? Conversely, when might it not be enough?
- Frequency of information (what volume of information might be excessive or too minimal?)
- Level of detail vs abstractness of information
- Direct notifications vs available to check
- Level of user work vs. their want for involvement in the tasks of gardening
- Are users comfortable with tamagatchification of their garden (representing it as an animated character / creature)?
- How comfortable are users with digital interactions with their physical garden?
- Are users comfortable with tamagatchification of their garden (representing it as an animated character / creature)?
- How comfortable are users with digital interactions with their physical garden?
Briefly describe your UEs.
- What are the UEs you created?
- User receives a notification on their phone that they have a daily report of their garden available to view. The user selects this notification and is directed to a screen containing extremely detailed information about their garden, including water levels, pH levels and nutritional levels.
- User goes to their garden and there exists a blinking light next to plants that communication information about the status of the plant to the user.
- User can watch the video of FarmBot (farmbot.io) and the research team will ask the user to reflect on their comfort with this level of automation with their garden. https://farmbot.io/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/FarmBot-Website-Hero-Background.webm
- The user has virtual characters in an app on his phone representing the real plants in his garden. The plant health is represented by its corresponding virtual character on the phone (like Tamagotchi) and user needs to take care of the plants to keep the virtual characters happy and healthy.
- User receives a notification that they have to water their plants notifying them that they need to water their garden. The user will enact actually watering the garden themselves.
- The user can view the moisture levels of their garden on an app. They can then manually water the plants in an augmented reality interface on their phone which will translate into actual watering of the plants in their garden using a connected system.
- How did you ground your participants at the beginning?
- Users had prior gardening experience and we asked them to imagine that they had a small garden in their yard that they planted and tend to.
- What are the research questions that can be addressed by each of your UE?
- Frequency of Information and level of detail
- Abstractness of information
- Level of automation
- Animism of the system
- Level of User work and involvement
- Level of comfort with digital interactions to conduct physical work in the garden
- Who are your UE participants?
- Gardening newcomers or individuals that would like to start outdoor gardening in their yards.
Reflect on what’ve you learned from this initial UEs study.
- What would you change about the design of your study and UEs?
- Could be the right amount of information, but not the right selection of information.
- We did not account for the durability of the ambient lighting system nor think that this was something users would ask about.
- Did the participants’ answers shed light on your research questions? How?
- We learned that users will express their level of comfort with frequency of notifications while reflecting on the user experience and as such we do not need to create a separate UE to capture this information
- Initial UE mentioned that they enjoyed watering, which contradicts some of the user interviews. This illuminates how needs can differ depending on the scale of the garden.
- Novices might prefer doing something manually as a means of connecting with their garden for the first time.
- pH level and nutrients could be collapsed into a single “soil” indicator as they are both “of the soil.”
- On information screen would want to know when they planted and also the ideal plant date and if they planted the plant in the appropriate region. Would also be helpful to know germination date so that if the plant has sprouted in x number of days they know if that’s a problem or not.
- Growing is less about food production for me, but more about the physical activity. Regarding automation, like the idea of being able to play things out and get information about which plants compliment each other, but do not like the idea of a fully automated garden “takes all the fun out of it.” Regarding gardening, it would be nice to use a digital device to water your plants while on vacation or away from the garden, but know that it needs to be watered.
- https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/plant-nanny-water-reminder/id590216134?mt=8 is sort of similar to the tamagotchi idea, so it could be effective as it makes me care about the plant itself, but would not want this in lieu of the detailed information. Perhaps if I could start here, but then tap on the plant in order to get more information that would be ideal.
- For ambient lighting conditions, it could look pretty, but there may be a learning curve. Would worry about the lights, would they be okay if I water them or accidentally stab them?
- We learned that the lifestyle of the user will need to be taken into account in order to understand the level of frequency / automation / information specificity that is desired.
- Through user suggestions, we discovered some additional metrics to think about monitoring: sunlight (is the plant getting enough light?) and proximity to harvest time.
An image of a user interacting with the information UE. Here we asked to touch on aspects where they would like more or less information. This user indicated she wanted to touch on “good” to get more information about what that means and expressed that the amount of information is fine, but the type of information should probably be different.
A user simulating the use of an app that takes detailed data from sensors in the garden to provide daily reports of the plant vitals (hydration, pH level, nutrient levels). We explained the system functionality to the user, described the place and time of day they were to be in, and simulated the receipt of a phone notification with detailed information about each individual plant in the garden.
Level of information detail: This user preferred the detailed information report over more abstract representations of garden health (e.g. colored lights).
Frequency comfort level: This user felt most comfortable with a daily update. “I would like it if it were everyday,” they said. “I would look at the garden update like checking the weather.” Weekly updates would be too sporadic: “What if the levels go down in the middle of the week and the plant dies?”
Directness of communication: This user was put off by the thought of walking through and manually checking the status of the plants in their garden. They appreciated that the system sent information directly to them in a targeted way, rather than producing ambient background information that would need to be deliberately checked.
Automation of garden labor: This user appreciated the full automation of the watering system. “This system should be to make my life easy,” they remarked. “I’m a busy professional and I don’t have that much time."
Level of information detail: This user preferred the detailed information report over more abstract representations of garden health (e.g. colored lights).
Frequency comfort level: This user felt most comfortable with a daily update. “I would like it if it were everyday,” they said. “I would look at the garden update like checking the weather.” Weekly updates would be too sporadic: “What if the levels go down in the middle of the week and the plant dies?”
Directness of communication: This user was put off by the thought of walking through and manually checking the status of the plants in their garden. They appreciated that the system sent information directly to them in a targeted way, rather than producing ambient background information that would need to be deliberately checked.
Automation of garden labor: This user appreciated the full automation of the watering system. “This system should be to make my life easy,” they remarked. “I’m a busy professional and I don’t have that much time."
A third user explains their feelings toward the garden health notification during a user enactment (see the UE description directly above).
Detail level of information: This user preferred seeing the detailed metrics about their plants over the more abstract or symbolic representations of plant status. This was related to their desire to learn about gardening and about the specific needs of different plants: “I’m not trying to garden just to get a bunch of food. I want to know what goes into making great tomato or basil plants.”
This user also expressed that they would appreciate if the app would provide tips and recommendations along the way. For example: “You overwatered this plant last week. Basil grows best with X amount of watering."
Level of work automation: This user saw it as “Sweet” that the system could perform the watering and plant health maintenance without his presence.
Detail level of information: This user preferred seeing the detailed metrics about their plants over the more abstract or symbolic representations of plant status. This was related to their desire to learn about gardening and about the specific needs of different plants: “I’m not trying to garden just to get a bunch of food. I want to know what goes into making great tomato or basil plants.”
This user also expressed that they would appreciate if the app would provide tips and recommendations along the way. For example: “You overwatered this plant last week. Basil grows best with X amount of watering."
Level of work automation: This user saw it as “Sweet” that the system could perform the watering and plant health maintenance without his presence.