Talk by Sarah Martindale

Sarah Martindale will present her DIS 2017 paper to the lab.

“Proof in the Pudding”: Designing IoT Plants for Wellbeing

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.