The service design inspiration 004: Home growing what you eat

Published in

Think Service

9 min readJun 16, 2020

As being healthy becomes a priority and environmental concerns rise with new information emerging on the topic, people are keen on knowing where their food comes from. One of the expressions of their desire to know is to harvest near them, both privately and as a service to others.

Hello, we are two enthusiastic service designers who love to dive into the world of products and services. We are here to share with you our service design explorations and inspirations which we think could be helpful for all of us to develop and innovate.

We felt that the topic around growing plants was very broad with it’s interesting facets, therefore, after the exploration, we decided to focus more on the aspect of growing food! Coming up next are five services that we felt represented the spread of possibilities regarding this new zero kilometers food wave!

Let’s go and take a look at some interesting services that talk about kitchen gardening!

Ponix System

An aesthetically pleasing hydroponic system for kitchen garden.

What problem are they solving?

Hydroponic systems are getting a lot of attention in kitchen gardening. But the issue with most of them is their aesthetics. In the early stages of any technology, aesthetics could be secondary but as tech matures it must fit in the environment where it belongs. While others offer illuminated mechanical boxes, Herbert is one such product which makes hydroponic systems an aesthetic piece of furniture for the house.

Who is it for?

For the people who want to have an effortless kitchen garden solution which fits the vibe of their house.

2 things we liked!

Seamlessly utilizes the walls of the house for farming.
Simple approach with minimal interactions such as seeding, refilling water and harvesting.

We wish…

the phone application would have helped to track the harvesting as the app currently only provides the light settings and textual information for the different plants. Also, we wish the beautiful product experience was matched even by the app.

Service Design Inspiration.

Ponix System takes a technical solution and hides it behind the selling proposition for the user. The desire for growth and green comes first for the user and plants are the centre of attention of the system itself, that does not communicate the technicalities but only the pleasing result for the user.

Context jam

(where we take a concept from the service and place it in a different context)

ABC is a company that produces waterproof covers for phones and wants to get into camera’s waterproofing. The covers make it seamless for users to use the phone underwater without even noticing the proofing. ABC’s users trust them with their basic product, instead of their competitors’, and that makes them consider ABC as their camera proofing solution too.

Urban Kisaan

A system that connects citizens to growing food

What problem are they solving?

Creating a transparent food chain, with a product-system which is employed in different scales in urban farming facilities as well as at home. Aiming at closing the gap between people and food in cities, Urban Kisaan is allowing for a lighter carbon footprint than traditional grocery shopping.

Who is it for?

People who want to know where their food comes from, and how it is produced. Also, for the people that want to grow it by themselves.

2 things we liked!

Possibility to visit the urban farms, to experience the harvesting process.
Not only a local farm to table service but also an enabler of home farming itself.

We wish…

the translation from the urban farm system to home growing was not so direct as the home farming solution requires the user to dedicate a lot of space to it.

Service Design Inspiration.

From selling the farming unit, to selling locally grown vegetables directly or even making harvesting an experience, the service lowers the barrier to become educated about the topic by providing offers at very diverse levels of commitment.

Context jam

(where we take a concept from the service and place it in a different context)

ABC is a company that rents tools for hobbyists and artisans to do their specific project. By also providing workshop spaces and courses in their HQ, ABC can cultivate their audiences’ skills while easing in new people.

Click and grow

An indoor garden without guessing

What problem are they solving?

Growing plants, especially for a produce, requires time, skills and knowledge. Click and Grow creates an independent system that supports a set of specifically made pods, which lowers the barrier to grow food at home giving more reliable results.

Who is it for?

People who want to grow their own food, but are limited by space, location or time to properly take care of them.

2 things we liked!

The set of pods you get with the subscription are made to increase success of growth.
You don’t need things that are not provided by the service to grow plants, apart from water and electricity.

We wish…

the wide choices of plants to grow (thanks to the system), reflected in the object choices too. Allowing a more personalised gadget that would benefit a user that cares a lot about occupied space.

Service Design Inspiration.

Click and Grow focuses on solving the most stressful part of the experience of growing plants by engineering success in growing their seeds. A slower release pace for new pods allows for a higher control on the product and, at the same time, gives the chance to more adventurous users to participate in the testing process of new plants!

Context jam

(where we take a concept from the service and place it in a different context)

ABC is a company that provides plumbing components to print on a 3D printer. By optimising the files with proper supports and settings for specific machines, the quality and experience is ensured even if the part is complicated. This way users get what they need without hustling for the perfect printing.

Homecrop

Kits to set up your terrace garden along with professional framing support

What problem are they solving?

Homecrop makes it easy to grow fresh, organic, seasonal vegetables on your terrace, rooftop and balcony. They provide all the kits, seeds and accessories to set up your home garden.They do not have a high tech product but a clear system to home produce. Homecrop provides a subscription basis maintenance service, with monthly visits by an expert to take care of your farm. You can even design your garden virtually and then order products.

Who is it for?

For the people who have enough space in the house to grow their own vegetables and time to put efforts in the farming.

2 things we liked!

A maintenance service which provides additional support and professional care to your farm.
Easy and clear to use DIY home garden kits with farming support over phone and text.

We wish…

the potential of the service was unleashed by designing and delivering clear and user friendly experience on their website, providing easy access to information and directions into starting your own personal farm.

Service Design Inspiration.

Homecrop has made home farming simpler with easy to set up DIY kits, but their unique offering is to provide the maintenance service which makes sure that the farms grown by the users are in good shape. This increases the sustainability of various farm projects and the involvement of the company in the product.

Context jam

(where we take a concept from the service and place it in a different context)

ABC is a DIY car brand which ships the customised kits and 3d printing modules to users. Then users build the cars as per their speed and requirements. ABC also provides routine onsite visits of their technicians to help build the project as well as maintaining it. This onsite service involvement increases the quality and demand for ABC products.

Farmbot

Open source CNC farming

What problem are they solving?

Farmbot provides open source solutions for setting up automated CNC farming. With a kit provided by Farmbot, one can set up their own automated farm within hours. The CNC kit helps to do all the farming process while being controlled by a web-based interface. Farming becomes fun because of its drag and drop features. At the same time, open source enables tech heads to add even newer and more efficient ways of farming.

Who is it for?

For the people who want to set up an automated farm of moderate or smaller size, which also gives them flexibility to design it according to their needs.

2 things we liked!

Making technology driven farming more accessible and available.
Keeping the innovative technology open source, in order to get multiple inputs to make the system better while creating the community of contributors.

We wish…

Farmbot focused on the food aspects and the advantages of growing food independently more than the technicalities of the solution.

Service Design Inspiration.

Farmbot started as a kickstarter project while keeping the technology open source. This helped the company to mature the product with the help of global inputs from the community, while the company polished the physical product. This way, they were able to advance the technology as well as a physical product which can go beyond the open source enthusiasts.

Context jam

(where we take a concept from the service and place it in a different context)

ABC is a company working on high tech autonomous delivery pods. While the company works on the units, ABC matured the digital infrastructure with their open source platform. This way, ABC was able to launch a fine product without over-investing efforts, time on the technical development and other companies benefited through this technology knowledge exchange.

Our big takeaway

Growing food by yourself is a great product service system as it requires equipment as well as effort over time. With varying efforts and investment, there are many companies providing farming solutions for houses. From extremely technologically driven systems to manual ones we found many smart examples. Human expertise remains one of the most important aspects of services in this sector, as they tighten the community and help in creating better results for the final user.

The experience of users becoming in control and in power to grow their own food off-grid is the valuable one. The wide variety of offers allows for anyone to satiate their curiosity and passion, enabling non professional enthusiasts to grow food with ease and convenience.

As off grid self sustaining prevails in the farming, it will be very interesting to see the civilisation shifting into a model where the separation between the farms and living spaces fades and a more circular approach to food comes into picture.

What this project is about

We as service designers have always loved to get inspired from various products & services. We have found that every service can give us at least one learning or insight which we can use in various other contexts. We started to breakdown services in various domains and began to mention the actionable insights which anyone/everyone can use in creative ways. This project for us is the output of that hunt and a growing resource which will keep unwrapping in front of us.