Beanstalk | Design Method and Research | Spring 2013
4 Week Project with Leslie Greene and Andre Dias Leal
"47% of households have a need for more community gardens"
- From San Francisco Recreation and Park Department
- From San Francisco Recreation and Park Department
Community gardens have limited amount of plots to give to interested gardeners
People desire a garden plot tend to wait 3-22 years
Our Insights:
Experienced gardeners want to share and teach
People want to garden while they wait
People want to participate
A plot is worth the wait
We want to provide waitlisters with the opportunity to garden, connect, and learn while they wait for a plot.
Learning from existing solutions, we hope our product encourages interactions between people and facilitate welcoming experience to build gardening community.
We want to...
Provide opportunity to garden
Maintain authenticity of gardening
Connect plot owners, waitlisters, and public
Initiate face-to-face teaching and sharing experience
Encourage people to involve in community garden
Initial ideas to gain feedback from different stakeholders
Things we want to enhance:
space for small-scale gardening, platform for communications between different stakeholders, hands-on experience, face-to-face sharing experience, visual interest to promote community gardens in the neighbourhood
The product would be a pole-like structure that would be located beside a gardening plot to let waitlisters start small-scale gardening without infringing on gardening space of plot owners. Gardening pots can be easily swapped to allow waitlisters and plot owners share their experience.
Interested gardeners can start their gardening projects once they sign up on the waitlist! They will garden side by side with a plot owner as gardening buddies. They can also swap pot and produce with other waitlisters. Once they receive their plot, the product is passed on to the next waitlister. This will initiate another buddy-relationship.