Farm to Community

Adv. Interactive & Web Design Fall 2016

[farmtocommunity-blog]

Sarah’s *very* rapid prototypes:

Post-it Idea: Tomogatchi Farming Game. A toy designed to get kids interested in taking care of something attainable - not just a virtual alien pet. Multiple Users: To Market App. Users can quickly filter through local farmers markets to learn information. The Word: "Spirited Away." Spirited away is a fantastic, but kind of messed up movie so this was a little difficult. I created a ticket for an eating contest based on a scene at the beginning of the movie when Chihiro's parents find themselves unable to stop eating and turn into literal pigs.

[farmtocommunity-blog]

Melissa’s Rapid Prototyping:

1. Interactive Cookbook - this cookbook has great recipes using locally grown produce. Use BlippAR to scan the page and find out which local farmers’ markets have the ingredients!

2. Farm Crawl - participate in a weekly farmers’ market crawl. Try to be the first one to get everything on the weekly shopping list from all the local farmers’ markets. Be on the look out for signage all over the farmers’ markets to help find the vendors!

3. Growing Buds - Start a backyard garden with your friends! Use the activity log to keep track of who did what to help your garden grow.

[farmtocommunity-blog]

Our team organized the post-it notes into different categories. The two most poplar categories were about interactive technology and education!

[farmtocommunity-blog]

Jacob and Lisa joined our class-wide brainstorming session!

[farmtocommunity-blog]

Jacob and Lisa came to visit our class and we got a chance to show them our individual experimental projects!

[farmtocommunity-blog]

Melissa’s final iBook!

[farmtocommunity-blog]

I am really glad I decided to explore iBook Author for my experiential narrative. It was quite challenging for me, because I am not used to Mac software. After watching a lot tutorials, I realized that iBook Author is actually a very simple, intuitive software. There are a lot of useful tools and widgets that really improved the message I wanted to convey.

I am very excited to see the final outcome! Stay tuned...

[farmtocommunity-blog]

After another round of interviews, I completed my visual opportunity analysis.

The goal of this research method was to do a comparison between the product’s (my iBook) aspirational qualities to the target audience’s core values. 

Through this analysis, I believe creating an iBook is still the best decision because it sticks to traditional reading and research habits while also introducing a new, simple technology to the older generation. It still allows for a great deal of independence and power. It can also make an impact on furthering the success and profit of the business. 

[farmtocommunity-blog]

People think you need all this land to grow tons of stuff and be successful and you have people at the forefront of this movement showing you that you need that much land. If you can just maximize your space and grow really densely and not look at the conventional ways of farming, you don't need a tractor to farm and be successful and make a good living out of it

Chris

[farmtocommunity-blog]

This is Eliza. She works for an organization called Impact Earth and their mission is quite simple: zero waste. This mission calls for a lot of the traditional methods of conservation, including the infamous reduce, reuse, recycle campaign. 

In addition to these methods, Impact Earth also promotes and supports small local farms. They help run and organize a number of farmers’ markets in the Rochester region, including Pittsford and Churchill. They are committed to local farming because it would in turn help their ultimate goal of zero waste.

[farmtocommunity-blog]

Question of the Day

What are you currently making?

I decided to create an iBook because I have decided to focus on motivating the older generation of farmers to see the value in educating the younger generation. I believe an iBook is a solution to keeping to tradition while also introducing a simple, new technology.

Are you clear in your goals?

What I am not clear on is what exactly the content will be. I am not sure what would be the best way to reach my goal. Quotes? Stats? IDK.

How will it be meaningful to our Seedfolk client, our farmer/consumer audiences, and people who might attend our end-of-semester exhibit?

This will be meaningful because it has a very strong community aspect. This method of creation is designed to bring connections between the older and younger generations. It will showcase all the in-depth research we have been doing that led us to our final service/product.

[farmtocommunity-blog]

Melissa’s new research method will be a value opportunity analysis. 

This method will allow me to map the extent to which a product’s aspirational qualities align with people’s ideals. 

 This analysis focus on 7 characteristics: emotion, aesthetic, identity, impact, ergonomics, core technology, and quality. The photo above is an example of what the final analysis should look like.

With this research method, I will be able to showcase the importance and value of educating the younger generation about farming.

[farmtocommunity-blog]

For Sarah’s next step, she will be interacting with individuals who empathize with Alex Ramos’ persona. Through connections at the Harley School, she will conduct online questionnaires to further explore the minds of her given audience. 

From there, she plans to create a series of interactive posters to engage her audience and encourage them to interact with the information provided.

[farmtocommunity-blog]

This week, RIT partnered with Headwater Food Hub and The Good Collective to host an on-campus farmers’ market!

They also encouraged many of the clubs and organizations on campus to participate.

[farmtocommunity-blog]

For Jennifer’s next research step, she’s going to interpret the data collected from over sixty surveys about individual’s public market experiences into Thematic Networks to begin to understand the data. The Word Cloud method may also be included to visualize the differences and similarities between various user’s experiences. These visualizations will be compiled into a video presentation that will explain how the data is relevant to an interactive solution for market-goers. 

[farmtocommunity-blog]

NY loves local food! RIT has been involved in the local food push, with an on-campus mini farmer’s market. 

[farmtocommunity-blog]

We did a survey of some folks in Rochester who attended farmers markets in the area, and this is some of the data we collected.