Introduction

During this project me and one other student worked with a stakeholder who had a dream to teach people about cultivation and crops. In this modern day and age that we live in only a few of us know how to cultivate crops. The knowledge does exist somewhere but it is no longer known by the average citizen. If the citizen in Sweden started using the area in their backyard for cultivation, it could feed almost four million people, and that is only in Sweden! Just imagine the possibilities.

To teach people how to cultivate their own crops, there needs to exist a service which is easy to use and interactive. Our stakeholder did not want a “digital book”, the service still needed to be informative whilst keeping it understandable. Our solution to the problem at hand was a mobile application where text, image and videos in conjunction would create an interactive and effective experience for the user. We wanted to show the entire process from seed to harvest and help the user at every step. The solution is explained in more detail below.

Down below I will describe our process from researching the topic, defining the problem and finally showing some solutions we came up with. If you want to read the full report it is available by pressing the big orange button (PS. It is in Swedish).

FULL REPORT

Research

In this project we worked with methods such as market analysis, Pest-analysis, questionnaire and interviews. We started with the market analysis to identify what other companies are offering and what MyGarden could do different. We found that there are services but these have focus on household plants and garden planning. Only a minority of the services had this kind of focus on specifically crops. The Pest-analysis was used to identify how MyGarden would affect the society as a whole through a political, economical, socio-cultural and technological perspective.

The questionnaire and the interviews were used to collect data from potential users of the service. We found a lot more than we expected and gained a lot of knowledge about what is required to cultivate crops at home. Based on the data that was gathered from the questionnaire and the interviews a persona was created. The persona was meant to represent the target group of the project. The results from the research phase are in more detail in the project report at the top of the page.

The Pest Analysis - Helped us identify how a service like this one would affect the society as a whole. Mainly from the political, the economical, the socio-cultural and the technological perspective. The Pest analysis can prepare a company or a team for potential external factors that can harm or help the project.

UX Problem

The main problem that we were facing this project was that the knowledge about cultivation does exist but it is spread out. We identified challenges with how to cultivate crops effective and which website, book or source is telling the correct information. We wanted to collect and gather all the data we could find into one simple and informative service.

The goal was to collect and visualize the most important information about each crop and the different parts of cultivation. We wanted to teach individuals how to cultivate effectively and how to prevent mistakes from happening. The service also visualizes the entire cultivation process from seed to harvest. We did not want to overload the user with information and therefore kept it as short but still as informative as possible.

Design Solutions

The design was created in Figma, which was a new tool for the team. It was challenging but at the same time rewarding as we got to learn and use a new tool. In the end we were able to present a mixed fidelity prototype with the main features included. The main idea behind the the design was to create an application that is not just a "digital book". We wanted interactivity and simplicity throughout the entire cultivation process, and this was achieved through pictures and videos. We focused on the primary parts that would create a minimum viable product for us - these included a home feature for the crops, a informative feature for all the crops and a easy to use search feature. The three features mentioned are all included in the picture down below. If you want to see the prototype as a whole you can find it here.

Feel free to press any of the pictures below to get a larger view of them.

Redesign

I went back and redesigned this solution a couple of years after the first design. I felt that this solution deserved a new look since it was designed quickly and not so detailed. It is now updated with a modern look and feel as well as less information on each screen, therefore reducing the cognitve load for the user. I wanted to go for less is more with this design and only provide the user with the most important information about each crop.

Final Thoughts

During this project my entire mindset has been set on sustainability and how we could best achieve it. I have expanded my knowledge about cultivation and sustainability, mostly ecological. Gathering and presenting information has been a big design challenge in this project because knowledge about cultivation exits but it is spread out all over. We wanted to make a efficient service that included all the most essential parts of cultivation your own crops.

The most challenging part for me in this project have been to understand the user needs. The users are very different in their knowledge, expertise and interest. It was hard trying to design for everyone but in the end we decided to focus on individuals who want to learn and are inexperienced withing cultivation of crops. Even though our core target group are these individuals we believe individuals that are experienced with cultivation can use the service as well to manage, sort their crops and who knows maybe learn something new.

Designstudio
Sustainability