2016
Farm the City
For youths who want to grow their own produce.
Launched.
TL;DR
Problem
Not enough people are aware of the benefits that farming bring to the table. We need more people, especially youths to actively farm.
Solution
Lower the barrier to entry through an app that educates youths on the basics of farming, enables and motivates them to do it in their own home.
Results
This product was still being built when this case study was written. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much we could measure.
Background
Farming in Malta is dying. The land is limited, and people are busier than ever. So people stopped even considering growing their own crops is an option.
This problem is not limited to Malta. According to the United Nations, by 2050 68% of the world population will be living in cities and is expected to reach 9.8 billion.
Urban farming helps to reduce the carbon footprint of the food that we eat and increases the space that we have available for us as humans to grow crops. And youths seem to appreciate this more than any other demographic. There are so many benefits in growing own crops.
Health
Consuming more fresh fruits and vegetables is one of the most important things we can do to stay healthy.
Money
Growing crops saves money on groceries. One of the benefits of enjoying own-grown vegetables is a reduced monthly food bill.
Stress reliever
Stress levels are on an all-time high, and mental health has become one of the biggest concerns for youths. Gardening is a natural stress reliever.
My role
This was an initiative lead by Prisms, an NGO working mostly with youths. I was the only designer of a very small team, consisting of an engineer, a facilitator and me. My work was done voluntarily, so I couldn’t invest as much time as I wanted to.
Aim and objectives
The project aims to make the youth aware that they can make use of urban spaces to grow their own crops and to help them achieve this.
Equip youths with basic skills that will enable them to make better use of the space that they have.
Provide basic information on how to plant seeds, water plants, harvest, prune etc.
Inform youths that they can further their studies in agriculture.
Increase environmental awareness.
Instils appreciation of the job of the farmer and the local fresh products.
Feature architecture
After a meeting with the stakeholders, we identified three different problems we’re trying to solve here;
Basics
We needed to, first of all, get youths excited about growing the crops. We saw the need for a place in which we could provide introductory information, some “basics” that are needed for growing crops.
We knew that this was going to be a large learning curve and that many youths will drop off and lose interest here, so we decided to use videos to make the content as digestible as we could. We split this into 4 main categories;
Preparation
Sowing
Maintaining
Harvesting
A total of 25 videos were recorded. Here’s one of the videos.
Vegetables
The next problem we decided merited its own area was the “vegetables”. This is simply a list of all the vegetables, with tips, suggestions and information on how and when to sow, maintain and harvest.
Crops are usually seasonal… so we organised them in 4 separate categories, one for every season. The few crops that could be grown in all seasons will be listed under all categories. The idea here is to make it easier to find the crops and to show information that the youths can immediately act on before others.
Recipes
This was never meant to be a cooking app, but growing crops is only half of the process. We felt the need to go an extra step and provide them with information on what to do with the produce. That would neatly close the loop.
Millennials and centennials cook less and learn to cook later than older generations did. The ability to cook food is good for self-esteem, confidence and positivity. We wanted to promote home-cooked nutritious meals.
Next steps
We have already conducted some early tests on the prototype, some minor UX issues with certain elements were found, and have been fixed.
The app is still under development. As soon as it’s in a testable shape, and as soon as we have all the content, we will run more user tests, interviews and workshops. It would be interesting to see how it’s perceived by the youths and find gaps there may be.
The biggest risk is how it’s marketed. I fear that at that age, many youths automatically reject everything that is suggested by the school. My gut tells me that for this product to really take off, it’s going to have to be marketed outside of the school system. Perhaps we should start looking to get funds to promote it on social media.
The project will first be launched in Malta, then it will be translated (that includes reshooting the videos) and launched in some schools in Belgium and Turkey too.