"Proof in the Pudding": Designing IoT Plants to Promote Wellbeing

Martindale, Sarah; Bedwell, Ben; Phillips, Robert; Pedros, Micaella

Abstract

This paper contributes a participatory design case study that used workshops and ideation frameworks to scaffold a conceptualisation of "user data-actuated" plants. The framework combines ideation cards, worksheets and facilitated co-design, guiding non-experts to conceptually connect personal data, health/wellbeing goals, plants and people. We demonstrate how the framework enabled participants to envisage "connected" plants, linking personal data outputs with inputs to actuated growing environments, creating biofeedback. From the results of design work carried out by participants, we synthesise and present four themes. The themes provide a spectrum of values that participants embedded in their connected plants, and in the act of gifting their connected plants to other people. The results of these workshops sign-post a new design space for personal data embodied in plants that could be taken forward by the DIS community.

• Conference Name: DIS '17: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2017
• Conference Location: Edinburgh United Kingdom
• Start Date: Jun 10, 2017
• End Date: Jun 14, 2017
• Acceptance Date: Mar 15, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Jun 10, 2017
• Publication Date: Jun 10, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jan 4, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 9, 2021
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Pages: 529–540
• Book Title: DIS '17: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems
• ISBN: 9781450349222
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3064663.3064743
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5198270
• Publisher URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3064663.3064743