Pebble

THE GOAL

We worked with the Boston Mayor's Office of Food Justice on the topic of urban farming and try to provide people with an alternative way to locally produced food and mitigate the gap between consumer food and its origin. We believe that could cultivate a healthier lifestyle and benefit the whole food system.

PROJECT INTRODUCTION

Our team created a concept product, an at-home-tea-growing kit to help develop an interest in gardening and farming in urban areas. The at-home kit is designed to rethink urban farming and create an innovative and uplifting experience. The objective of pebble is to create a positive social impact by encouraging urban-farming habits that can develop into urban culture.

Urban farming is the cultivation of agricultural products in urban areas which can provide a variety of environmental, social, and economic benefits to urban communities.

Tea can be a gateway to urban farming, tea leaves themselves can be steeped and then used as a non-toxic fertilizer.

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BACKGROUND RESEARCH

Through research and project development, we established that the barrier Pebble would need to solve was the cultural hesitancy in participating in urban agriculture.

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USER RESEARCH

We visited urban farms in Providence and Boston, conducted interviews with industry experts to find solutions to pain points, and developed our problem statement.

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PROTOTTYPING

The next stage was developing prototypes after we collected insights to improve the concept. Based on the insights we received, we developed our first prototype. It is a modular planting device that teaches the user the different growing stages of each flower through a clock and calendar. Once the planting is complete, the user can remove the flowers and dry them through the device to make a flower tea.

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ITERATION

We have conducted focus group interviews with our potential users: the home gardening novices. They all show high interests in our design, and we have understood their pain points and concerns, which we have incorporated into our current iteration. We have also conducted industry and technical expert interviews during product ideation and iteration process, including PROF. DAWN KING from Brown School of Environmental Studies, PROF. ROB ELLIOT, the Urban Leaf Co-Founder, and ORION KRIEGMAN, the Executive Director at Boston Food Forest Coalition. They have confirmed the technical feasibility, market potential of home grown edible flowers, as well as the existing need to transfer the farming experiences to in-door scenarios.

We applied the insights we got to our second iteration and repeated the process until we created the third and final iteration of Pebble to create a tool that could produce behavioral change.

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HOW DOES PEBBLE WORK?

Pebble is a plant monitoring device that is designed to guide and support novice urban farmers. Prompting users to water their plant based on soil readings created by Pebble. By pairing Pebble with its app, it moves the ritual of gardening beyond monitoring into community building. Pebble users are connected to an online community of other urban gardeners, to share ideas and learn from one another.

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“Urban farming can reduce transportation costs, help reduce runoff associated with heavy rainfall, and lead to better air quality.”    -USDA

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Future of Pebble

By positioning Pebble for growing tea, it connects urban farming to a culture-enriched experience. From cultivation to its consumption, tea is rich in cultural rituals. Pebble expands on cultural tea traditions but brings the tea ritual into the modern landscape through technology. Growing tea can be a way to reach and create a diverse online community which can help Pebble better cater its services to people from different cultural backgrounds.

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​What Pebble Hopes to Achieve:

- Help protect biodiversity via encouragement of urban farming.
- Foster mindfulness with the ritual of growing food.
- Community connection through cultural rituals of farming and consumption.
- Donations to local community gardens from Pebble purchases.