It’s Grow Time
Part 1 - Research.
Investigating what prevents people from growing their own food at home in order to design a solution that encourages people to do so.
Overview
Completed for: Major Project Module as part of the UX Design Masters course at Loughborough University.
Duration: 3 months.
Role: Individual Project
Purpose: Use design research methodologies to determine what prevents people from growing food at home to provide a clear direction for the design stage of the project which involves designing a solution that encourages people to grow food at home.
Primary Research Questions
What prevents people from growing their own food at home?
What are the difficulties of growing food at home, specifically in apartments?
What is the difference in behavior of someone who is successful at growing food and how do these behaviors compare to someone who is not successful?
Understanding the Problem
Assumptions and Secondary Research
Secondary research was conducted to investigate the current environmental impact of food in the USA, considering food miles, carbon emissions, food waste, and pesticide use.
To help reduce the environmental impact associated with food production and increase food transparency, people can grow food at home.
An assumption map was created to identify assumptions about primary users to help scope the research and understand the users' context. This research focused primarily on apartment dwellers and those with living spaces that were less accommodating to outdoor gardening.
To help determine a clear direction for data collection, the following Hunt Statement was developed.
Hunt Statement
The aim of this research is to investigate attitudes and behaviors that prevent apartment dwellers from growing food at home when they have a desire to grow but may be restricted. This will allow me to design a solution that will give them the knowledge and tools to overcome these barriers.
Sample
Participants
Convenience sampling was used to recruit participants in Washington State through social media (including outdoor and gardening forums and Facebook groups). All participants lived in apartments, had the desire to grow their own food, and had limited gardening experience.
Eight people agreed to be interviewed about their attitudes about and behavior involving gardening and growing food at home. Five of these participants continued in the second stage of research by completing a diary study. The table shows an overview of participants.
Data Collection
01. Semi-structured Interviews
Semi structured interviews were conducted to understand participants' thoughts and attitudes toward growing food at home. They were used to help uncover perceived pain points and why participants do or do not participate in home gardening.
Due to Covid-19, all interviews were conducted over remote working software such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom as in-person interviews were not possible.
02. Preparation for Diary Study
An interview with an expert horticulturist was conducted to determine the most suitable plant to be used in the diary study.
The desired plant was one that is not difficult to grow but requires enough maintenance that participants needed to actively participate in caring activities.
Time of year, region, temperature, availability of sun, whether to grow from seed or from a start, and time it takes to grow were considered in the selection process. Availability of plants was also considered. As this research was conducted during the springtime (which is the ideal time of year to grow produce), a variety of edible plants were available to choose from at a local nursery.
After discussion with the horticulturist, buttercrunch lettuce starts were used as they are relatively easy to grow and participants would be able to visibly see distress on the leaves if not cared for properly.
Using this type of plant allowed for better observation of how participants responded when they saw signs of distress in their plant. The diagram shows an overview of the selection process based on secondary research and discussion with the horticulturist.
03. Diary Study
A 3-week long diary study was conducted to investigate how people care for produce plants within the context of their homes. This method was used to observe the evolution of participant thoughts and plant caring behaviors over time.
Participants were given one buttercrunch lettuce plant and asked to register with and download an ethnographic research app called Indeemo.
Over the three week period, participants were asked to record all plant care activities in the Indeemo app by responding to prompts like those shown on the left.
With each response, participants were asked to use an Emotrak chart like the one shown to report their feelings about their progress.
This was to better understand how participants were feeling throughout each stage of the growing process.
Data Analysis
Affinity Diagramming
Affinity diagramming was used to analyze data from semi-structured interviews and secondary research to identify patterns within the data and uncover overarching themes among participant responses.
Interview recordings were selectively transcribed and annotated on virtual sticky notes and similar themes were clustered together in Miro, an online collaboration platform.
These clusters helped visually collate and organize interview data to identify the barriers that prevent people from growing their own food at home and factors that encourage growing food at home.
Thematic Analysis
Thematic analysis was conducted using a five step framework as described by Castleberry and Nolan (2021):
Compiling: Participant responses were downloaded from Indeemo and compiled into a Microsoft Word to allow the researcher to familiarize themselves with the dataset.
Disassembling: Participant thoughts, feelings, and actions were coded by frequency in the data to draw out meaningful patterns and similarities.
Reassembling: A frequency table was developed to demonstrate the types of thoughts, feelings, and actions of participants and the number of times each occurred.
Interpreting: Themes were uncovered by identifying prominent patterns in the data.
Concluding: Themes were analyzed within the context of the study and insights were developed.
Thematic analysis was used to analyze data gathered from diary studies to draw out patterns and recurring experiences, thoughts, and behaviors of and between participants.
Key Insights
Findings from research indicated that there are barriers that dissuade people from growing their own food at home, but there are also factors that encourage people to grow.
Persona
A persona was developed to capture key emotional pain points and goals for users. This persona is used to help create empathy with the target user and to help visualize target users wants and needs to focus subsequent ideation and design.
Empathy Map
An empathy map was created to supplement the user persona and further empathize with user pain points and goals.
Vision Statement
There is an opportunity for a product for apartment dwellers who want to have a rewarding home gardening experience, have transparency about the origin of their produce, and gain the confidence to grow their own food at home but are limited by their lack of knowledge and resources.