OUR GREEN PIPE DREAMS
A student approach design to innovate Bayside Community Garden
For the Spring 2017 semester at University of San Diego, a User Centered Design course was taught by Dr. Chen. This course focused on applying UCD engineering which entailed seeing the world through the eyes of our users. It is an iterative process that includes the phases empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and feedback. Our group focused on innovating the Bayside community garden because the garden was going to be moved to a different location. Below is our detailed story of how we became closer to the Linda Vista community, conceptualized and developed our final product!
Empathy
Throughout the semester we collectively did 20 hours of shoveling, painting, harvesting, and planting all the while fostering relationships with the gardening staff; Amy and Linnea. Everyday we visited the garden we learned a little bit more about Bayside as a whole and felt their concerns of the future of the garden. They still made it a point to provide fun activities for the locals of Linda Vista which can bee seen below!
Still standing since 1886.
Bayside provides fun music classes for the community!
Most starter plants are housed in here.
Still standing since 1886.
2202 Comstock St, San Diego, CA 92111
SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BAYSIDE
"Initiated by the spirit of the reformist movement of the 1880’s, the Sisters of Social Services founded Bayside Settlement House to meet the needs of native-born and immigrating families. Presently, Bayside Community Center operates as a nonprofit with a mission to empower our diverse community to improve quality of life through services, education, and advocacy. Throughout our Bayside’s history, community residents have remained at the heart of our center."
Since it is moving locations in 2017, our team focused on salvaging the garden plots in order to save the produce for the weekly farmer's market and the produce in the plots that are rented out by locals of Linda Vista.
BROADENING OUR PERSPECTIVE
Collectively we began to understand the financial struggles that Bayside Community Garden faced as we documented our experiences when we worked in the garden. We realized that most of the disorganization within the garden was from not having enough funding for Amy to be full-time. Additionally, the sales at the farmer's market also did not generate enough profit to provide a steady income for Amy. This operation then fell on the hands of Linnea who works through Federal Work Study through University of San Diego to pick up the work Amy couldn't provide.
In order to save this garden we wanted to learn more about the people who keep the weekly farmer's market flourishing and maintain the process of renting out plots so we decided to interview Amy, Linnea and other Bayside community leaders individually to gain insight from their perspectives on the future of the Bayside Community Garden.
Click on the link below to see our interview strategies & questions!
