HappyLeaf, Smart Pot
Final Project, HCID 521 Prototyping Studio, t University of Washington
Introduction
A smart pot that senses, understands, and informs what your plant needs. To help you take better care of your plants.
Sensors(Moisture sensor, Light sensor, Proximity sensor) sense the level of water and light. When the plant needs water and light, HappyLeaf sends SMS to remind the owner, at the same time, the Sun-LED and Droplet-LED on the surface of the pot will also indicate the lack of water or light. To enhance the human plant interaction experience, we also add a proximity sensor, using which the plant will react to the human proximity by lighting up a series of LEDs in form of a smile.
Design Question
How can we help people take better care of their plants?
- People have busy lives, occupied with work and mundane routines and often forget simple tasks like watering their plants, or making sure they get the required light.
- People sometimes have little knowledge about how to take care of their plants and not a very clear idea of what each individual house plant needs, like how frequently and how much water it needs etc.
- Loneliness is one of the biggest problems in a modern city. As it is, plants are thought of as adding cheer and a cosy homely feeling to homes. What if the plants can react more humanly to their owners?
In addition to basic functions like expressing needs, we would like to explore more interactions between plants and owners, especially making the interaction more emotional. The happyleaf smartpot prototype is a small first step towards an exploration in this direction.
Prototypes
Electronic Prototype (Functional Prototype)
We prototyped three main functions.
1. Hydration level: Moisture sensor
We did this by making our own moisture sensors using paperclips (galvanized metal) and wrapping ends of wires around the ends of it, and finally soldering them together. When the soil is more moist, the sensor will report a lower resistance.
2. Light: Photoresistor sensor
3. Distance, Proximity sensor
Lo-fi physical prototype
To get a good sense of the experience of a pot that displays emotions and indicates needs, we made a very quick, lo-fi model prototype.
Video Prototype (Experience Prototype)
With the experience Prototype, we mainly wanted to prototype the experience of a concept like this, through an exploratory video. This concept video also allows us to prototype some functions that we would like in the product but are beyond the scope of the electronic prototype.
Scenario
Jen is busy, working in her living room. Suddenly, she receives a message from “HappyLeaf” — “Tulip needs water and sunlight!”. Oops. She is so busy working on that deadline, she totally forgot to water her plant and take care of its light needs. The plant is inside her bedroom with windows and blinds closed. It is a rare gorgeous sunny day in Seattle, the plant needs this! She walked into her bedroom, and also notices the Sun-LED and Droplet-LED indicators are both on, reinforcing that her plant needs water and sunlight. She picks up her plant and takes it to her sunny living room. On watering it, the droplet indicator disappears and she knows that the plant had enough water! She opened the window to let more sunlight filter in. The Sun-LED responds by turning off. The plant now glows in the beautiful spring sunshine.
Summary of User Testing
Overall, users are satisfied with this product. They would like to buy such a product to help them take care of their plants, some of them admitted that they have no time to fully take care of the plants, also they do not know whether it needs water or not, and how much water the plants want. Also, they feel happy when they notice the plant can “smile” when they come close to it.
Synthesis of Findings
The electronic prototype answers well about our original questions. The product can sense when the plant needs water and light, and how much water and light it needs, and it will inform the owner via SMS and Sun-LED and Droplet-LED. People surely can take better care of their plants, with the help of this kind of technology.
With this simple small step, we have tried to explore how to make interactions between humans and plants more engaging. Given more time, this project could be taken further, by more indepth research into the desired interactions, the psychology of humans and their interactions with objects in their surroundings as well as more research into possible technologies, as well as more refinement of the concept with consideration to the fact that different kinds of plants have varying needs in terms of humidity and nutrients.
