Planta

What if urban gardening wasn't just a hobby? Based on this question we developed a gardening system in offices called Planta. The goal is to take first steps of a new future life style.

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Our connection to food

Previous research has shown that, especially in cities, the distance between humans and food production has increased considerably. This has a number of consequences such as a wasteful food consumption and a growing population but not enough resources to supply this growth. Hence we were asking ourselves: How could urban agriculture be integrated socially and efficiently into people's immediate environment? And how well could one advance digital self-sufficiency?

Why in the office?

Fostering urban food production is beneficial in places where food is also consumed. Offices are therefore very suitable here, as employees eat together five days a week during lunch break. This way the distance between cultivation and consumption as well as transport distances can be reduced.

The components

Integrating into an office

As more and more companies begin to have company messengers such as slack, the most suitable communication interface is a chatbot within an already existing communication system.

• Integrated in Slack
  It is integrated in the company’s internal messenger and coordinates the lunch among the office workers
• Calendar integration
  As soon as ripe harvest is expected it checks free calendar entries to find adequate times for lunch
• Recipe recommendation
  It also suggests recipes for ripe vegetables and gives tips and tricks on how to grow them.

User flows, sequence diagrams and wire frames

Designing a system means considering all components and how they are linked to each other. For this we used a variety of methods such as a flow chart, system diagram, sequence diagram and wire frames. The challenge was to create a user flow, that allows enough space for informal communication (coffee talks and other non-virtual arrangements) but also guides users to a successful lunch time.

Click prototype

Wire framing the process was very helpful to evaluate the designed user flow. Here you can try out the application that shows the lunch use case.

Reflection

All in all, following this concept has taught us a lot about the complexity of food production within the current life style that seems to be as dense as modern cities. The first iteration of this concept has delivered a possible integration of fast growing leafy vegetables in offices. The next iteration would be rethinking our life style in general and how integrating food production in daily life could find a meaningful place.