Designing to the Pattern: A Storytelling Prototype for Food Growers

Peter Lyle,Jaz Choi,Marcus Foth

doi:10.3390/mti2040073

Abstract

We present the design and pilot study of QuickTales, a mobile storytelling platform through which urban gardeners can share gardening experiences. QuickTales was built as a response to design patterns, drawing on previous studies we conducted with residential gardeners and different gardening communities in a large Australian city. Given the diversity of needs and wants of urban gardeners, the intent for QuickTales was for it to serve as a multi-purpose tool for different individuals and groups across the local urban agriculture ecology. The evaluation provides initial insights into the use of storytelling in this context. We reflect on the use of design patterns to as they were used to inform the design of QuickTales, and propose opportunities for further design pattern development.

Highlights

Encouraging gardening in urban environments offers many benefits to the gardener, including positive impacts on their mental and physical health [1,2]
These patterns seek to respond to the findings of those studies, and suggest several patterns that relate to: the access to resources and physical gardening space that a food grower has access to, and how the activities are situated within their daily lives; the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) that a food grower interacts with, and how it is situated within the local environment; and the connections a food grower has to other people and groups involved in growing activities
This study has explored the design and pilot evaluation of QuickTales, guided both by design and reflection of design patterns

Summary

Introduction

Encouraging gardening in urban environments offers many benefits to the gardener, including positive impacts on their mental and physical health [1,2]. We explore the use of food related design patterns proposed by Lyle et al [7], based on the three studies, to inform the design of a storytelling prototype. These patterns seek to respond to the findings of those studies, and suggest several patterns that relate to: the access to resources and physical gardening space that a food grower has access to, and how the activities are situated within their daily lives; the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) that a food grower interacts with, and how it is situated within the local environment; and the connections a food grower has to other people and groups involved in growing activities. Rather than focus on HCI (Human–Computer Interaction) usability, the discussion reflects on the design patterns based on feedback from an initial pilot study with five people

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion