The UX of Soil (Part 1 of 2) — UX Studio Practices

What under the sun could possibly mean by the user experience of soil? To find out, we first looked at what soil is. Soil is the basis of the whole planetary dependence. Soil is everywhere, from supporting agroecosystems to providing genetic resources for pharmaceuticals; and from regulating climates to supplying metal-oxides-silicon transistors for a MacBook. In fact, the term ‘Homo’, meaning human, comes from humus, meaning soil.

‘‘For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’’ — Genesis 3:19, the Bible

If every experience were to boil down to the substratum, then only would soil be revealed. On the grounds of this, how could we go on thinking about experiences without acknowledging soil as the principal agent?

Translated in English from Chinese, a poem about the virtues of soil found in classical literature.

The next brief instigated the same enquiry by asking us to understand human-soil relationship and explore planetary soil dependence. The two new methods introduced to serve research for this project are AEIOU and Speed Dating.

Team: Kate Chernysheva, Sanya Nayar, Sue An and Ula Rodakowska

It took us a couple of days to comprehend the brief and go through the widely available literature on soil sciences to be able to appreciate all the ways in which the processes of the earth, operating both on micro and macro levels, are built upon the dependence of soil.

A.E.I.O.U

For the first phase of the project, we hit the road straight to the Mudchute Farm which is a large urban park and farm in London.

Photos from our field visit to the Mudchute Farm (part 1)

Photos from our field visit to the Mudchute farm (part 2)

We chose this location for our research of the AEIOU (activities, environments, interactions, objects and users) in attempt to respond to the following question:

How can users gain by interactions taking place within a system which has different environments constituted of several objects that can facilitate activities towards achieving their goals?

Board 1: Hierarchy of Dependence put together by me.

Board 1 : Hierarchy of Dependence

1. It was observed that humans are the apex consumers dependent on all the tiers directly below them for different needs of food, clothes and shelter.
2. In some of the cases, not only are users dependent on tiers below them but above them as well. For example, insects (secondary order consumers) help to pollinate plants (first order consumer).
3. In point of fact, soil is also dependent in some ways on levels based above it. For example, plants help to hold soil together and animal droppings enrich soil with nutrients.
4. The impact of humans on soil is studied to be more detrimental than beneficial because they contribute a lot of wastage and erosion to soil.

Board 2: Context Mapping between environments, objects and users done by me.

In Board 2, high activity environments are mapped by showing the number of users interacting with objects belonging to them. The types of users are shown by using different colours of threads : green (plants and autotrophs); pink (animals) and purple (humans).

STORYBOARDING IDEAS

This in-depth analysis helped significantly to see through the connections between the entities to draw out concepts that would lead into storyboarding.

i.1] Sue investigated permeability of definitions of dirt and soil. She established that both are essentially the same element intertwined in the play of an infinite loop.

i.1

i.2] Kate showed that like a library, soil houses stories written from the microscopic to the landscape scale of human and evolutionary history.

i.2

i.3] Ula depicted that the more soil is used, the more it is lost.

i.3

i.4] Identifying with my experiences at the Mudchute farm, I explored soil as an agent of placemaking because it is where interactions between local community are encouraged by collaborative activities like nature walks and planting saplings in nurseries, besides imparting education to children about the importance of countryside activities and contributing to shop businesses by engaging visitors at souvenir shops.

During the interim presentation in class on 03/Dec, we put together all the important findings and subsequent concepts to obtain a critical review from the tutors and other students. Eventually, we realised that we had spilled out in too many directions and were referred back to our research for revision. Students interacting with the research boards commented that physicalising them made the relationships of humans and other users with soil explicit.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Das Biswas, T. and Mukherjee, S. K. (2001) Textbook of Soil Sciences. McGraw-Hill Education. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EVkunzkyvmQC.

Genesis Chapter 3 Kjv (no date). Available at: https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-Chapter-3/ (Accessed: 1 December 2020).

Koch, A. et al. (2013) ‘Soil Security: Solving the Global Soil Crisis’, Global Policy, 4(4), pp. 434–441. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12096.

Minami, K. (2009) ‘Soil and humanity: Culture, civilization, livelihood and health’, Soil Science and Plant Nutrition, 55(5), pp. 603–615. doi: 10.1111/j.1747–0765.2009.00401.x.

trophic pyramid | Definition & Examples (no date) Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/science/trophic-pyramid (Accessed: 28 November 2020).

White, R. E. (2013) Principles and Practice of Soil Science: The Soil as a Natural Resource. Wiley. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GTQA0FKeEeoC.