Connected seeds and sensors

Abstract

We present a case study of a participatory design project in the space of sustainable smart cities and Internet of Things. We describe our design process that led to the development of an interactive seed library that tells the stories of culturally diverse urban food growers, and networked environmental sensors from their gardens, as a way to support more sustainable food practices in the city. This paper contributes to an emerging body of empirical work within participatory design that seeks to involve citizens in the design of smart cities and Internet of Things, particularly in the context of marginalised and culturally diverse urban communities. It also contributes empirical work towards non-utilitarian approaches to sustainable smart cities through a discussion of designing for urban diversity and slowness.

Algorithmic Food Justice: Co-Designing More-than-Human Blockchain Futures for the Food Commons

“…The project consisted of three workshops that took place in late 2019 at Spitalfields City Farm, an urban agricultural community in east London with whom we have been conducting long term participatory design research [29,31,32]. We involved diverse participants from our established networks that included community growers and organisers, activists, artists, and technologists, who we understood to be already engaging in post-humanist design.…”

Role of Smart Cities in Optimizing Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Opportunities in Nagpur, India

“…have also been recognized in SC literature on food systems (refer to Figure 6d). From smart farming to enhancing food supply-chain performance, ICT applications are increasingly demonstrating extreme potential to revolutionize food systems [101][102][103]. The governance of food systems in SC has also emerged as a key theme of the 2015 Milan World Expo [104].…”

Ordinary User Experiences at Work

“…We do not try to provide full coverage of this literature, which spans different disciplines beyond HCI, but try to situate our research in this literature. We focus on: Structure Task Actors Technology  Professional growers as work domain experts [22], not on leisure gardening or urban farming [11,38,81]  Climate-management tasks related to caring for plants [25], not on the indoor comfort of people [1,50]  Commercial, present-day horticulture [74], not on futuristic alternatives [69,88] or interaction design for the international development of agricultural practices [108]  Climate-management technology as a professional tool [66], not on leisure tools such as open-source sensors for urban gardens or urban installations involving plants [18,19,41] 2.1 UX at work…”