Green Pipe Dreams
AKA Modular Gardening System (MGS) or mobile garden
This was an undergrad engineering project that utilized the user centered design process to help build a prototype for the Linda Vista community. My team volunteered with the Bayside Community Center. This center provides activities for children and the elderly as well as a community garden. In the year of 2017, they were moving locations so we developed a mobile garden system (green pipe dreams) to help salvage the garden.
Client
Bayside Community Center
Role
Engineer, Webmaster
Team Member(s)
Brian Lee,
Trey Stead,
Gabrielle Walter
Introduction
Throughout the semester my team was introduced into the phases of User Centered Design. We became close with those who gardened at Bayside to help provide a prototype that would be useful. My role as Webmaster was branding and documenting our user interviews, design process and iteration.
Year
2017
The problem
Bayside community users need a way to utilize their community garden to provide food for local residents.
The Goal
Provide Bayside a feasible prototype for our typical user - community members around 19 - 50 years old that love to garden.
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.
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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. From here we found 2 main pain points with their current garden.
User pain points
Garden plots are too small
Moving vegetables to farmers market is difficult
Meet Karmin, Our Persona
We interviewed community leaders and bayside gardeners to gather qualitative date to create our persona; Karmin.
Karmin believes that the community garden positively influences the community. It is a place to meet people, grow food, learn new things, escape, etc. She is self-starter when it comes to leading in the community.
"I am sad about the move even though I know it's for the better." - Karmin
Define
We developed a goal statement to fit Karmin's needs to keep her front and center in our designs.
With the transition of the garden to a new area, the garden leaders need to ensure that current services of providing gardening space for community members are met. Our challenge is to boost Bayside’s ability to maximize produce and gardening space for community members from the minimal space provided to them. Ultimately, it is to provide the community of Linda Vista with affordable, healthy options and thus support food security via the plant beds and farmers market.
Ideate
We came up with a variety of ideas after doing some in depth research. Our brainstorm session had no constraints so sky was the limit! We gathered as many fun ideas that fit Karmin's needs.
 Compost System |  Mobile Garden Trailer |  Mobile Garden Bus |
|---|---|---|
 Vertical Recycled Water Bottle Garden |  Vertical Rotating Modular Garden |  Modular PVC Pipe Beds |
From all these different ideas, our team utilized a weighted benefit analysis. Each of us rated the ideas and took the average. The result was our last option, modular pipe beds - our green pipe dream.
Prototype
Affordances:
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The garden bed (the cylindrical cardboard piece) on the top of the rack, affords being picked up
Signifiers:
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The opening on the garden bed signifies that things can be put inside of it..
Our prototype allows gardeners of Bayside the ability to grow vertically, rotate crops easily from the rack system, and be carried to the farmer’s market right across the street.
As a result, the consumers at the farmer’s market could select from freshest produce straight from the ground (from the cylindrical bed) Also, Karmin will not have to deny community members growing space because the prototype creates more allocated spaces strictly for the community.
Testing
Unfortunately due to the move, we were not able to get ahold of Amy, Linnea, or other employees of Bayside to test our prototype. The users that we tested where John Loggins, a community leader and the people of the Gardening club. Their motivations and goals align with Karmin’s, so they fall into our endusers. Trey and Brian conducted a discoverability test to see if our users could point out the affordances and signifiers as well as here their feedback and suggestions.
Trey testing John Loggins
User Feedback
"Could you possibly make the MGS square, so that the beds could be stacked and would not roll around in the back of a truck?"
- garden club member
"Lack of handles might make it difficult for users to carry."
-John Loggins
"Make the holes smaller or add cheese cloth so soil doesn't leak through."
-garden club
member
Feedback & Next Steps
After hearing several opinions from different users we utilized design change forms, which detail as to why to include this change. This way all members of our team know why they are necessary. Even though our course finished before we could have addressed feedback we would have added wire mesh to the irrigation holes, steady leather handles, and redesign the bed to be flat to address the concern of transportation to the farmer's market.
Website Information
I was tasked with documenting our user centered design (UCD) process by utilizing a web builder. Below is an in depth process of developing green pipe dreams for the Bayside Community Center. There were specific guidelines in place to describe UCD as we did each phase.
Key Takeaways
This project inspired me to pursue User Experience Design. I learned how to conduct interviews and develop a persona. This helped our team retain focus on our enduser. This also made me think about how to design with accessibility in mind.
