The Urbbi-box is a simple sensor box that monitors the light falling in the area around it and the moisture in whatever soil you've placed the supplied moisture sensor. The information is directly shown on the face of the Urbbi sensor box but also sent wirelessly to a web service which allows you to view the status of your Urbbi on the go!
The web service allows you to see the status of your plants along with the history of when and how much you watered, how much light fell on your plants on any given day and the ability to dive deeper to see the 'rhythm' of your plants visualised as simple, easy to understand charts & graphs. The emphasis is to help people learn the causes and effects of their lifestyles on that of their plants and aims to help them answer questions like: When did I last water? Did I water enough? Is it over-watered or under-watered? Is the light in this spot in my house good for growing, for example, Basil? Is the light better for Thyme? Answers come slowly and through time as Urbbi starts to understand and learn about your lifestyle. Tools allow you to add reminders into your existing web services (Google Calendar, Twitter, etc), get suggestions from Urbbi for what to grow (and where) and scale up to grow an even wider variety of plants by obtaining additional moisture sensors and viewing them all through one, clean, online interface.
Building on top of the knowledge & learning service, Urbbi incorporates a community connection which allows a user to simply take a picture of your plants (or anything you want) and add a comment or question as a caption. This connection between Urbbi users will foster a community of support to help answer any mysterious questions that come up in growing different plants. Why are my leaves dry? What are these black spots? This simple interaction between people using Urbbi provides the basis for peer-to-peer learning and expands greatly the possibilities of the service to inspire and teach.
The Process
Metro-Nature is an ongoing research project into the meaning of nature in an increasingly urbanised world. It served as the starting point for the project by both immersing myself in current thought and philosophy on the meaning of nature and what the market looks like for people wanting to garden in a city or in a "land-less" environment (e.g. apartment gardening, urban gardening, education and community allotments).
1. The popularity of such services as Aarstiderne in Denmark and others worldwide have shown a opportunity to inspire people to eat healthily by providing a convenient service which takes a lot of the effort out of doing so. However, inspiring people to grow something themselves still remains an area of opportunity.
How can I create a smarter relationship between individual customers and the service by encouraging them to learn how to grow their own through knowledge exchange and experimentation?
2. Providing a system that starts small and allows the consumer to scale up in a convenient way to the point where growing something feels comfortable and even enjoyable.
How can I create a scalable system for apartment gardening by making it convenient and informative?
3. Waiting lists have become the bane of any beginner gardener in the city. Allotments and urban gardening initiatives are struggling to keep up with demand. A clear indicator that people want to get involved in gardening and all for different reasons.
How can I include those who already garden into the service to encourage people in the city to explore growing in their own homes?
4. To respond to increasing urban population and urban density.
How can I leverage increased population density to inspire sharing of knowledge and produce by opening channels of communications between customers?
5. Increase social engagement between neighbours, communities, the service and other customers/gardeners.
How can I create a user group culture to inspire customers to learn and create together by simply delivering a system with increasing potential the more involved a customer gets?
This image is a summary of my process and thinking up until the point I was just about to start experience prototyping and refinement. The prototype directions were derived from the brainstorming session I conducted and clustering the ideas that came out of it. I decided to explore two varying design experiences in both directions ending up with a total of 6 initial experience prototypes. You can see this process as you scroll further. The design criteria was driven by the co-creation done in France. Click on the image to see a bigger version.
Essentially what I wanted to focus on initially was a way to encourage people to care for their plants in their home by making it as easy as possible. I wanted to explore how people would just find themselves caring for their plants naturally, instead of having to make a special effort.
