The Farm-a-Thon Ideas
Recently our Openfarm Farm-a-Thon was held at Openlab. We have given you a Farm-a-Thon ReCap where we mentioned the winning team’s concept briefly but want to share with you all of the ideas that came up during the one day hack-lab on the challenge:
“How can we make urban farming and growing your own vegetables more accessible to the public through technology?”
Though the teams all came up with interesting and different ideas, we could see a number of common threads within many of the solutions. Here’s a short summary of some things we thought were interesting about the different solutions to our Farm-a-Thon challenge. We’ll also present each team’s concept or idea for you to get some more inspiration on how to get involved yourself.
Shared insights
We noticed there were a few topics that several of the teams included in their solution and definition of the problem relating to the Farm-a-Thon challenge. When this type of overlap of ideas happens, it often points to an important insight about the challenge itself that can be helpful to reflect on for future endeavors.
Here are the main points we saw:
- Working with the constraint Lack of knowledge, and including a learning experience in their concepts, usually together with a social aspect
- Designing for a young user
- Including smart planting and human-plant interaction
- Including social aspects, sharing of experiences, creating a sense of community in person or through social media
The ideas
SMART KIT PLANT
1st place
Team members:
Despina, Lars, Pernilla, Adria & Magnus
User/Persona:
The persona the team designed for is called Åsa. She is a 12-year-old middle school kid in a medium sized city who really likes skateboarding, music and tacos.
Constraint:
Lack of knowledge
Solution:
The team imagined their idea as part of a school project where Åsa receives a smart potted plant which with intelligent technology, photo recognicion software and connection to an app and social media can interact with Åsa to inspire her to learn about plants in a fun way.
When Åsa takes a picture of her plant it opens up to an app where Åsa’s plant talks to her. It can tell her what kind of plant it is, that it is thirsty and needs water, which of her friends on social media also has a smart potted plant etc. It also recognizes her interests by analyzing her social media information and even asks her to go skateboarding together on a sunny day, creating a personal bond with the plant.
URBAN KID FARMER
2nd place
Team members:
Johan, Tanya, Alexandra & Christina
Constraint:
Lack of space
User/Persona:
The Urban Kid Farmer team designed for a persona called Kim, who is a 10 year old urban kid with divorced parents. Kim likes skateboarding, friends, social media, family pets and is also into animal rights and considering a vegetarian lifestyle.
Team Urban Kid Farmer has acknowledged that Kim’s generation, generation Z, is globally concerned and climate concious. They want to eat sustainable, vegetarian/plant-based food and need to understand where the food comes from in order to do so. Kim would like to explore, interact and share experiences about growing food but lacks space to farm.
Solution:
The solution is a community supported agriculture-farm combined with a digital platform for knowledge, feedback, inspiration and community. At the farm the kids can have events like a Harvest Exploration Day, Junior Master Chef Dinners, etc. Families can buy the vegetables beforehand and come and pick them up when they are harvested. The users can also connect with a social network through their mobile phone, to share recipes and connect to a larger global kid farmer network to learn and share.
GREEN CONNECTION
3rd place
Team members:
Christos, Gitta, Doris & Ela
User/Persona:
The Persona Green connection designed for is called Mike. He is a 23 year old economist who enjoys sports and recently moved to Stockholm.
Constraint:
Lack of knowledge
Solution:
Green connection’s idea is a smart pot for plants. The smart pot combined with social media can help Mike gain more knowledge and experience of caring for his plant, and also meet new people.
Through several different sensors the smart pot can measure temperature, humidity, heart rate, motion and more. It will know if Mike is at home, if he is exercising, and if he is taking care of the plant.
The data from the smart pot will be stored on the cloud. The cloud service acts as the plant’s brain and makes decisions. For instance if Mike does not take care of his plant the cloud will inform his Facebook friends to ask for help. The cloud can also connect him with other people who like plants or have the same plant as Mike.
The rest of the community can help and share knowledge through the computer interface or by meeting in person, and help to care for each others’ plants, adding a social dimension.
POLLI-NATION
User/Persona:
This group designed for a persona called Lily, a 73-year old woman living in an apartment in Stockholm . Lily is experiencing some age-related problems, loosing her hearing and memory and feels lonely and isolated. She loves gardening and growing vegetables. What she lacks is space to do so and would like to access more gardening space in Stockholm.
Constraint:
Lack of space
Solution:
The solution developed for Lily is called Polli-NATION. When Lily joins the Polli-NATION she gets a starter kit with sensors for her balcony garden, connected to an app that tells her the best things to grow, based on her conditions. Through the app she connects to a school with a greenhouse that also has sensors. The school also has a bee-hive with bees to pollinate the plants. The hive, and each bee, has a sensor that shows where it flies, so the school children can see and understand that they are part of a larger community. Through the connections via the app, Lily can help the school to grow vegetables, share her knowledge and connect to new people.
BERRY CLOUD
User/Persona:
The persona this group designed for is Maria, a 24 year old who likes a healthy lifestyle. She wants good nutritious food that is quick to prepare. She is also a social person and wishes to connect with nature.
Constraint:
Lack of knowledge
Solution:
The solution, called Berry Cloud, is a union of urban farmers growing vegetables together at urban community plots around the city. When Maria joins Berry Cloud she recieves a starter kit consisting of seeds from the plants grown in the gardens, gerdening tools and recipies. The Berry Cloud app shows her a map of Stockholm and where the community gardens are located. She can joint to plant her veggies or connect with other people to swap plants or join harvest dinners. There is also a gaming aspect, so Maria can get points and rankings from helping others etc.
Berry Cloud wants to bring people out of their houses and into the soil, and experience farming with all their senses.
PLANTAGRAM
User/Persona:
This group designed for Benjamin, a 13-year-old highschool student. He likes skateboarding & fastfood. Benjamin wants to move to more veggie food but lacks knowledge to do so.
Constraint:
Lack of knowledge
Solution:
The team’s solution for Benjamin is called Plantagram. It is a system for schools and the rest of the community consisting of IKEA-inspired green houses, arriving in flat packages, and that can be set up at the school yards. The green houses are modular and can be adjusted according to the amount of space there is. Every student team gets one plot each in the greenhouse. The plants in the greenhouse are connected to sensors upploading information to an online platform where the school children can interact, learn and share ideas.
The goal is to grow more food in the city, create a passion for growing at an early age, and is a combination of technology and traditional agricultural methods.
