The Garden: Designing with values in mind
Gardening has been shown to be a very therapeutic pass time and hobby for many individuals as well as be a benefit to residents within retirement communities for low impact daily exercise. The health and wellbeing of gardens is of interest to the people who choose to participate in these areas and can assist in bringing new participants to use and collaborate in this space.
A major component of having a successful garden is the understanding of the moisture content of the soil and that being translated into an easy to interpret medium. When approaching a garden bed or pot, you are likely to inspect the conditions of the plant to make an assumption regarding its current condition. The Empa-Tree project has been aimed at delivering an easily interpreted visual of the current moisture in the soil upon approaching a garden.
Values of Empa-Tree can include that the participants in the garden can see a clear visual Identifier of an obscured element within the garden. This idea can give knowledge of the nurturing aspect of the garden maintenance and its rewarding qualities. This can be seen as a level of convenience to the gardener and the involvement they wish to have within the garden. By identifying when simpler tasks are required, participants can choose how much of the nurturing level of the garden they wish to be involved with.
Along with Empa-Tree being activated via motion detection at the garden in question, data is collected periodically regarding the soil moisture content and the number of times the motion detector has been activated over the last interval. Although not immediately visual through feedback on the device, the data is stored on a database and can be accessed for future use.
What can be achieved with this data? Allowing to post totals of the number of activations can give an indication of the number of participants involved. Overtime, the same data can start to show trends in visitation and activity. Linking this with the soil moisture values, assumptions of garden maintenance can be made. Keeping in line with principles of a smart city and making this data readily available to citizens, work towards other visualisation and data collection tools can be designed.
The Sand Project is an example of visualising data collect from Empa-Tree. By taking the data relating to the number of activations over the last hour, a visual representation is created they can be easily digested by the observer. Without having access or knowledge of where and how the data is being collected, the participants of the garden are given a convenient representation of the number of visitors to the garden. This can help inform participants when applying for funding for their community garden by being able to give an indication of activity within the space over a period of time.
By keeping the principles of developing for a smart city and making the data collected usable and easily interrupted by its citizens, there needs to be ways that data convenient and not obscured. By designing devices which have their users in mind, the ability to make their needs met as well as giving participant the information to help sustain and grow their projects, we increase the level of possible citizen collaboration within the smart city and not just allow for industrial involvement and control over its development.
