=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2382/ICT4S2019_paper_23
|storemode=property
|title=Leaky 'Resilient Smart Gardens' Pilots in the Wild - An Action Research for Improving Multidisciplinary Capstone Projects
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2382/ICT4S2019_paper_23.pdf
|volume=Vol-2382
|authors=Birgit Penzenstadler,Libby Gustin,Caitlin Rubia,Brian Powell,Christian Anca
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ict4s/PenzenstadlerGR19
}}
==Leaky 'Resilient Smart Gardens' Pilots in the Wild - An Action Research for Improving Multidisciplinary Capstone Projects==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2382/ICT4S2019_paper_23.pdf
1
Leaky “Resilient Smart Gardens” Pilots in the Wild
— An action research for improving
multidisciplinary capstone projects
Birgit Penzenstadler
Computer Engineering and Computer Science
California State University Long Beach, USA
Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland
birgit.penzenstadler@csulb.edu
Libby Gustin
Hospitality Management
California State University Long Beach, USA
libby.gustin@csulb.edu
Caitlin Rubia, Brian Powell
Computer Engineering and Computer Science
California State University Long Beach, USA
caitlinrubia@gmail.com, brian.powell@student.csulb.edu
Christian Anca
Ascension Gardens, USA
christian@theascensiongardens.com
Abstract—Millennials and post-millennials often grow up dis- food requires proper gardening techniques, In this study we
connected from food preparation despite the indicator of self- focus on teaching students adequate watering practices for
preparing meals being the strongest single indicator for long- home gardening. Caetano et al. [4] (p. 566) state, “too little
term health. Up to now, our higher education system had
struggled with implementing projects that help students overcome water will retard plant growth and reduce quality, while too
this disconnection and thereby teach them holistic approaches much will leach fertilizers and reduce aeration”. Adequate
spanning multiple disciplines, which could also benefit their watering dictates the quality of the harvest, which is why we
future careers. We conducted a multidisciplinary pilot between try to facilitate it by an automation that protects the user from
computer science and hospitality management within a senior overwatering (wasting resources) and protects the plants from
design project class and service learning capstone class on
food sustainability that implemented two versions of a resilient drought.
smart garden to compare their yield to hand-watered growing To reduce an individual’s outdoor water usage, researchers
boxes. In this paper, we report on the set-up, discuss lessons and practitioners have developed automated watering sys-
learned from the pilot, and project future scenarios leveraging tems [4], [9]. However, there have been no scalable, affordable,
the sustainability transformation mindset principles that support or easily replicated solutions for people at home who lack
transitioning towards teaching sustainable livelihood with the
support of ICT. technological skills. There are larger scale approaches for
trying to grow food in the desert that need more public
engagement though, so exposing students to this topic in a
I. I NTRODUCTION drought-prone region is beneficial [17].
Millennials and post millennials often grow up disconnected Therefore, the purpose of this project is to engage millen-
from food sourcing and preparation despite the indicator of nials in growing food and thereby using this fresh whole food
self-preparing meals being the strongest single indicator for at home as well as to address the issue of food security on
long-term health [19] and food sourcing having a significant campus. The long-term goal of the project is to address food
impact on fruit and vegetable intake [22], [14], [13], [23], security issues related to lack of access and utilization. In the
[32]. Up to now, our higher education system had struggled CSU system, one in five students do not have steady food
with implementing projects that help students overcome this access, creating barriers to the ability to learn [5]. Access
disconnection and thereby teach them holistic approaches barriers are a result of a lack affordability and/or ability to find
spanning multiple disciplines, which could also benefit their markets with fresh produce. Barriers to utilization come from
future careers. Growing food can help students connect to lack of knowledge, skills and/or time to source and prepare
where food comes from while impacting their health and the whole food [10]. The immediate outcome of this project
health of the environment. However being able to grow quality provided fresh nutrient dense whole food to the campus food
2
bank as well as introducing students to the taste and possible 3) Food utilization: appropriate use based on knowledge of
use of unfamiliar foods. In the long term, the successful basic nutrition and care, as well as adequate water and
implementation of the a resilient home gardening system sanitation
would address these issues on a larger scale by providing an 4) Food stability: must be present “at all times” in terms
easy home gardening system to grow your on produce. An 11 of availability, access and utilization.
episode cooking intervention, produced by the second author Food security is a complex sustainable development issue,
of this paper, can accompany the garden system to help address linked to health through nutrition or malnutrition, but also
utilization. The 11 episode cooking show addresses barriers of to sustainable economic development, environment, and trade.
knowledge, time and skills in short 15 minutes episodes.1 Approximately 1 in 9 people on earth are food insecure. In
The contribution of the paper at hand is that, based on a the United States this equates to 49 million Americans living
preliminary prototype reported on in [29], we conducted a in food insecure households [38].
multidisciplinary pilot between computer science and hospi- A study by Barthel and Isandahl (2012) found lessons
tality management within a senior design project class and learned from different historical and cultural contexts (the
service learning capstone class on food sustainability that Classic Maya civilization and Byzantine Constantinople) sup-
implemented two versions of a resilient smart garden to port that urban gardens, agriculture, and water management
compare their yield to hand-watered growing boxes. contribute to long-term food security for people living in
Our Resilient Smart Garden helps to ensure vegetable plants cities [2].
are not over or under watered. The aim is to find the water bal-
ance to grow the perfect vegetable. It also takes the mandatory
watering out of the users hands and automates watering based B. Related work
on the moisture of the soil. The Smart Garden takes moisture There are a few commercial-off-the-shelf “COTS” systems
and temperature readings to decide if the garden needs more that are available in the market to help gardeners grow plants.
water. These readings are stored in a database that is accessible The search led to identifying Edyn Smart Garden System [7]
online and can be accessed through PC or mobile smart phone. and GreenIQ Smart Garden Hub [9]. Both tools facilitate
The data can be used to further research on the best watering the gardening and irrigation but are not targeted towards
method that fits for different kinds of plants. educational use.
The impact of our work is that the set-up, discuss lessons There are also a few electronic DIY projects are more
learned from the pilot, and project future scenarios leveraging accessible with easily programmable single board micro-
the sustainability transformation mindset principles can sup- controllers. Daniels [6] offers instructions to make an outdoor
port transitioning towards teaching sustainable livelihood with automatic garden watering device using an Arduino UNO that
the support of information and communication technology measures the soil moisture levels and is powered by a 12 V
(ICT). battery. Aqib [1] presents an advanced automatic watering
garden tutorial that will store moisture, temperature, humidity,
II. BACKGROUND heat index, pressure, and value status into a database. The
controller is powered by a 12 V battery and communicates
A more in-depth treatment of related work for this project
with a server locally using an Ethernet Shield. Hamza [11]
is reported on in detail in [29], and therefore we report only
provides information on making a temperature data logger
on the most relevant research closest to our work and forming
using a hardware clock. The data is stored locally on a se-
the baseline for it.
cure digital card and does not communicate with a server.
Iseman [12] demonstrates an automatic watering garden using
A. Food Foundations DIY moisture sensors. Two nails are attached to a wire and
Food security encompasses the ability of individuals, house- connected to the micro-controller to detect the soil moisture
holds and communities to acquire food that is healthy, sustain- level by putting a low current through the soil via one nail and
able, affordable, appropriate and accessible [39]. detecting the resistance via the other. The more water in the
The pillars for food security indicate how well the system soil, the less resistance — and vice versa. The temperature,
is taking care of its constituents by assuring food, as a public humidity, and moisture data is sent through a serial port,
good, is accessible, available and utilizable by all citizens but not stored into a database. The micro controller must be
equally. Food insecurity, a household-level economic and connected to a computer to display the data.
social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food The Guarduino project [37] in India is most similar in design
(United States Department of Agriculture) [36], is a global and to the Resilient Smart Garden. The Guarduino uses a variety
national issue. According to the World Health Organization, of analog and digital sensors including light, temperature,
Food security is built on four pillars: and homemade moisture sensors that are all connected to
1) Food availability: sufficient quantities of food available an Arduino. Similar to ours, one of the goals for this project
on a consistent basis. was to help with production of food by optimizing the amount
2) Food access: having sufficient resources to obtain ap- of water delivered to plants when resources are scarce.
propriate foods for a nutritious diet All of these projects have similar approaches to implement-
ing an automatically watering garden. Our Resilient Smart
1 http://libbyskitchen.blogspot.com, https://youtu.be/CASHB82Z6B4 Garden shares some characteristics to minimize water usage
3
while maintaining a sustainable environment for the plants. A. Senior design project course
The main difference is that we perform the moisture sensing The senior design project course is a capstone course over
on a plant-specific basis. two semesters where students are in teams of three to six
and develop a product from scratch. In the first semester,
we usually follow a more traditional process of requirements
C. Previous work
specification, design specification, test specification and im-
In [29], an extension of the results presented at the LIMITS plementation. In the second semester we move to an agile
workshop 2018 [30], the Resilient Smart Garden project is model with several iterations. That way students are exposed to
set up for the first time in an indoor lab, which allowed for both common paradigms. In the second semester, students are
more controlled variables but also turned it into an artificial allowed to work largely self-directed based on their previous
environment with little natural light, thereby artificially tam- experience from the first semester. They report back weekly
pering with a few variables. Previous iterations of the garden and we hold reflective meetings to enhance their own analysis
had shown that it is feasible to water completely automated, skills and learn from how the project unfolds [18].
but we didn’t have a comparative study that would show
whether it yielded more or less than a traditionally hand-
watered vegetable garden. B. Service learning course in hospitality management
Multidisciplinary research is highly valued by all funding Students enrolled in a general education capstone course
agencies in theory, and in practice there are many hurdles called “Exploring a Sustainable Food System” are required
that need to be conquered. However, the learning experience to complete 20 hours of service in the community. In this
for both sides has been insightful and merits the effort. course, students address food justice in the community. The
Multidisciplinary capstone projects are an easy introduction Resilient Smart Gardens was one of the projects the students
to conducting multi- and/or interdisciplinary research but, could choose to encourage home gardening as a means to
because of the higher number of involved people, require even increase food access in communities. Three student leaders
more organizational overhead. We saw that overhead but still were identified and trained to organize the daily watering,
thought it was a good opportunity to try out the concept and maintenance and data collection of the project. The student
then decide whether this should be made possible for students leaders then trained, scheduled and managed the volunteers
on a wider base or only in special cases. while reporting and consulting regularly with the Supervisor
Our long-term vision is to integrate this with permaculture of the project.
principles, where a garden built of plant guilds can foster
human independence from extraneous materials and promises C. Experiment set-up
to deliver the highest harvest yield while making keeping the
grounds sustained [20]. The comparative experiment was set up to find out whether
two planters using two different implementations of the re-
silient smart garden idea could achieve as much harvest as the
D. Transformation Mindset Tool two hand-watered comparison planters. To be able to harvest
after only two months, we planted two specific types of kale
Last but not least, we applied the transformation mindset
and romaine lettuce. It was run using a special soil developed
tool proposed by Samuel Mann in 2017 [16] to further
for needing less water.
analyze the opportunity for contributing to ICT4S. Mann et
In the time line for the semester, the roles, tasks, and
al. developed a Transformation Mindset [16] as a means to
milestones were the following:
guide practitioners in becoming a sustainable practitioner as
• Roles: Supervisor for the computer science students was
part of their professional framework of practice and defined
the “Transformation Mindset as a way of thinking that leads to Birgit Penzenstadler, supervisor for the hospitality man-
transformational acts resulting in socioecological restoration”. agement students was Libby Gustin, supporting domain
At ICT4S 2018, he brought a DIY kit for the tool that he expert for the gardening with the special soil was Chris-
distributed to conference participants and the first author of tian Anca.
• Tasks: The computer science students got their implemen-
this paper took it back to California and used it with her
students. tations ready to deploy in the garden, the garden expert
delivered the special soil and seedlings2 , all teams planted
and put the systems in place, the hospitality management
III. R ESEARCH D ESIGN AND M ETHODS students watered their planters and took readings of all
water meters (see instructions in Fig. 1, 2), the computer
In the iteration presented in this paper, we added a multidis- science students monitored their systems, and we jointly
ciplinary research component and teamed up with a hospitality harvested at the end of the semester.
management professor and her students to set up a comparative • Milestones: Planting and deployment on October 10th,
experiment to see whether the automated watering planters harvest on December 7th.
relying on the Arduino board constructions could keep up
with the hand-watered planters by the hospitality management 2 The semester was too short too pull the plants from seed and get all the
service learning team. way to harvest.
4
The evaluation compares the amount of harvest across the
planters. Furthermore, we qualitatively explore the lessons
learned.
IV. I MPLEMENTATION AND R ESULTS : L EAKS AND
V EGGIES
This section describes the steps we took — application of
the transformation mindset, implementation and deployment,
growing and monitoring, and harvest and results.
A. Application of the Transformation Mindset
As Mann et al. [16] explain: “The mindset can be considered
with a device recognisable to those familiar with software
engineering’s Agile Manifesto — a list of values and attributes
arranged so that each is defined in part by an opposing
value [8]. The agile manifesto structure finishes with ‘that is,
while we value the items on the right, we value those on the
left more’. These things on the right then are not inherently
wrong — we could find people attempting sustainability doing
those things, but we argue that the things on the left are better.”
The Transformation Mindset can be used to consider different
development initiatives.
Students analyzed the application of the Transformation
Mindset principles before they went about the detailed de-
sign and the implementation. We also revisited the principles
afterwards during the reflection phase.
Fig. 1. Protocol A for the hand-watered planters • Socioecological restoration over economic justification:
The resilient smart garden is a low-key, hands-on version
of growing food, useful for communities.
• Transformative system change over small steps to keep
business as usual: The idea of growing their own food
instead of choosing what to buy gives students more
agency.
• Holistic perspectives over narrow focus: The multidisci-
plinary project helps broaden the students’ horizon.
• Equity and diversity over homogeneity: This is also one
of the principles of companion planting in permacul-
ture [20].
• Respectful, collaborative responsibility over selfish oth-
ering: Taking care of fellow students by donating to the
food bank was appreciated.
• Action in the face of fear over paralysis or wilful igno-
rance: Growing food is empowering.
• Values change over behaviour modifications: The project
gave students new perspectives.
• Empowering engagement over imposed solutions: Stu-
dents can choose to grow (at least part of) their own
food.
• Living positive futures over bleak predictions: Students
perceive the opportunity as positive in the face of food
deserts in the local drought-prone climate.
• Humility and desire to learn over fixed knowledge sets:
All setbacks in the project could jointly be overcome.
B. Implementation and Deployment
Fig. 2. Protocol B for the automatedly watered planters The computer science students had initial prototypes from
the end of the first semester of their senior design project.
5
Fig. 3. Arduino monitoring system: schematic diagram on the left, and with encasement ready to be deployed on the right
However, taking those prototypes out in the wild required more
effort as it turned out they didn’t run stable yet. Furthermore,
challenges were to connect them to a wireless module for data
transmission as well as getting them connected to solar power.
In addition, the databases needed to be set up and connected.
All of this took them several weeks at the beginning of the
semester after the initial two weeks of getting everything back
up and running after the summer break and designing their
individual sprint plan for the semester. Figure 3 shows one of
the two prototypes before deployment “in the wild”.
In the mean time, the supervisors prepared the remaining
time line, purchased required hardware, and organized the
delivery with the domain expert. The hospitality management
students were briefed according to the protocols in Fig. 1 for
the hand-watered boxes and Fig. 2 for the automatedly watered
boxes. Fig. 4. Set-up of the garden experiment with sensors and automated watering
Despite the challenges, we managed to deploy everything on
October 10th with a few software updates over the following
few days, see Fig. 4 for a close-up of box B2, and Fig. 5 for received several emails from the student union sustainability
a closer look at box B1 with all other three boxes lined up representative over the course of the experiment asking us to
behind and the sign asking to not tamper with out watering make sure we are not wasting water. This box did end up using
system in the front. significantly more water than the other ones.
At the end of the experiment, the B1 automatedly watered
C. Growing and Monitoring planter used the same amount of water as the hand-watered
planter A1 that had used less water (last readings from
We started monitoring the systems and found a few glitches. December 5th):
It turned out that one of the systems was overwatering due to a
not well fitting hose connector, see Fig. 7, so a puddle gathered • Hand-watered box A1: 144.2 gallons
next to the planter, see Fig. 6, that was pointed out to us by • Hand-watered box A2: 280.93 gallons
• Automatedly watered box B1: 143.33 gallons
the service learning student volunteers. We fixed that, but this
• Automatedly watered box B2: 1022.25 gallons
prototype (planter B2, Fig. 4) continued to slightly overwater
despite the team repeatedly reducing the watering time. We While having only two boxes per type does not allow to draw
6
Fig. 8. Harvest on December 7th 2018
Fig. 5. Experiment with warning signs so people don’t take off the hose
general conclusions, we see that there can be water wasted
using either approach and that one of the automatedly watered
boxes and one of the hand-watered boxes using almost the
exact same amount of water (0.9 gallons difference) over the
course of two months.
Box B1, which did well in terms of not overwatering, had
a different problem though caused by the exact setting in the
garden: There was a large tree overshadowing the box for a
large share of the hours the sun was shining on the garden
every day. Therefore, the plants did not grow as well.
D. Harvest and Results
We harvested all grown kale and lettuce on December 7th
and took it to one of the kitchens in the Department of Family
and Consumer Science to clean and weigh the vegetables. In
Fig. 8, box B1 is being harvested by the computer science
students. In Fig. 9, the entire team is standing in the hospitality
management kitchen behind the cleaned produce.
Fig. 6. Puddle due to over-watering at the start
Box Vegetable Weight Number
A1 Kale 4.3 12
A2 Kale 5.4 9
A1 Lettuce 17.4.18 25
A2 Lettuce 17.7.8 22
B1 Kale 1.13.7 15
B2 Kale 1.8.5 10
B1 Lettuce 12.0.8 25
B2 Lettuce 10.06.3 25
TABLE I
A MOUNTS HARVESTED PER VEGETABLE PER PLANTER
The exact amounts of the harvest are listed in Table I.
Overall, the hand-watered boxes delivered more produce. The
number of lettuce heads and kale bunches is in the same
range for all boxes, which means no plants died off after
we planted the seedlings. There is a clear difference in how
well the produce grew though. Both the kale harvest and the
lettuce harvest amounted to significantly less weight in the
automatedly watered boxes. One of the reasons for the lower
amount of B1 could be that this box had less sunlight as
Fig. 7. Leaky hose connector with ill-fitting thread mentioned in the previous subsection. However, as box B2 did
not have that problem but achieved roughly the same amount
7
Fig. 9. The entire team with the harvest of the four planters
of harvest, we know that this is not the only and probably must collaborate and communicate with others who might not
not the strongest influencing factor. Box B2 did receive too being working on the same part of the project.
much water and as noted by Caetano et al. [4] too much water
will leach fertilizers and reduce aeration, which could have Several students would have liked to have more in-person
impacted the low yields in this box. meetings across the disciplines, e.g. Another insight I gained
After each team member was allowed to take some of the was that not meeting with people in person weakens commu-
produce for personal use, we donated the remaining large part nication.
of it to the local CSULB food bank3 for students on campus. The hospitality management students reported insights on
Bringing the fresh produce to the campus food bank was not growing vegetables: I learned about how much water really
only rewarding to the students, it increased their awareness goes into growing vegetables! and I learned a lot about how
of the need for healthier food options at food banks as well to water and how much watering and care it takes to have
as recipe suggestion and cooking skill support. As a result, successful growth and maintain a garden.
all campus garden members are donating fresh produce to the
food bank every 2-3 weeks. Hospitality Management students The computer science students reported technical accom-
are developing simple recipes to use the food, and consulting plishments, e.g. My major insights on the experiment were
with food bank patrons about cooking skills and utilization. the extended capabilities of the Arduino and its ability to be
integrated with other technologies like the ESP 8266 WIFI
module and the SD card reader module. as well as The
V. L ESSONS L EARNED
understanding of the data sheets and schematics of all the
Around the harvest day, we sent an email to all student components really helped when trying to get the system to
participants to ask for their observations and lessons learned: function properly. Having the option to solder and learning
What were your major insights from working on the exper- how to do so properly, allowed for easier customization of the
iment? What were things you did not expect? What would system in comparison to using a shield for the Arduino. The B1
you do different if you had to do it again from scratch? team tinkered with their system in creative ways to optimize
What else would you like us to know about your experience? the accuracy: Adding resistors to the sensor system helped in
We collected the answers and analyzed them to improve the the voltage drop to provide a more accurate reading, yet due
project organization and management for a future replication. to the complexity of the current being impacted the readings
weren’t as consistent.
A. Major insights There were also a few technical challenges, e.g. It’s also
There were some project management insights, e.g. This extremely difficult to use a board like the Arduino and try to
kind of project required contribution from different depart- connect to the school’s wifi because of the networks encryption
ments. Much like in the real world were your assigned a role protocols. Lastly, I learned it is very difficult to do weekly
in a project, however to continue and complete the project you maintenance, which is probably why a lot of companies don’t
periodically release updates on a weekly basis and more often
3 https://www.asicsulb.org/corporate/discover/beach-pantry do so on a bi-weekly or monthly status.
8
B. Unexpected Things the Raspberry Pi board over the Arduino Uno R3 because the
Trouble with the readings on the water meters was reported Pi board functions as a computer with a built in module that
by several students, e.g. There were quite a few mishaps with would allow the user to log into a network as if the board
the water meters. They were very finicky and created a lot was a laptop. Also the Pi is more recommended to use if your
of stress for the project. and One thing I did not expect trying to complete a project that is as difficult as ours. Which
was having to deal with the equipment not working properly. required multiple components and communicating with other
Having a miscommunication in dealing with this was the embedded systems. Furthermore, the garden setting could be
biggest set-back for the project by far. I also did not expect improved: The plot would have done best in full sun as well as
there to be a certain required level of expertise in horticulture being deployed in the spring through summer. The placement
going into the project. of the plants and sprinkler could have been more organized
About trying to get ready for deployment, one student and dispersed evenly for minimum amount of watering with
reports: Originally when trying to control the water access maximum crop growth.
using a solenoid valve, I had multiple attempts soldering
together components to control the valve to open and close D. Overall Experience
when prompted, which set back the ability to test the watering Student valued the project management experience (It was a
schedule. good chance for me to learn more about how to lead a project
Furthermore, some of the sensors had problems: We did and how to effectively deal with people and management.), the
not expect to have trouble with the data readings the sensors horticulture learning experience (I also learned more about
provided. When testing the functionality of the sensors with the how to take care of crops which can help me develop my
Arduino, the readings were accurate to information provided own garden eventually.), and reported that they enjoyed being
on the datasheets. When wiring the sensors to the WIFI around like-minded people (It was nice to work with people
modules for the data to be passed and stored on the Arduino who are devoted in lessening our water usage and improving
wirelessly, the readings for the soil moisture and UV sensors water efficiency.).
were very inaccurate. One student pointed out the option of doing the experiment
The student who tried to solve the over-watering problem at home to save mileage: This kind of project would be better
of B2 explained: Some things I didn’t expect to occur was the if the student was allowed to complete the project in one of the
constant over-watering. No matter how many times I messed group members home. The reason is because it would allow the
around with the parameters on when to water the soil around group to monitor the garden on a daily basis without having to
our planter would remain moist. Even after days where the drive to school especially if they live far away. There wouldn’t
garden system didn’t water the soil around the planter never be any issues with the wifi regardless of what board the group
fully dried. I also didn’t expect to find out that it is impossible uses because the user has complete control of their network.
to connect to the school’s wifi. Online there’s all these claims All students gave us positive feedback about the experience,
where people have attempted and been able to do it. But, after for example The experience as a whole was very rewarding.
attempting to connect using the same method others claimed as well as Overall, it was fun visiting that part of the campus
to do online it still proved to not be possible. and communicating with the various people involved with
this project. Finally, several students expressed gratitude, for
example I really enjoyed being apart of something and seeing
C. Do Different in Replication it grow. Working with Claudia and Julio was great. I feel
Students would have wanted to up their gardening expertise grateful Libby trusted in us and gave us the opportunity to
ahead of time, e.g. I would also research more on garden help run this project.
maintenance and how to properly take care of a garden so
that we could prevent over-watering. VI. D ISCUSSION OF L IMITATIONS
Also, they’d want more interaction, e.g. Cooperate more We seem to have run into a few classic problems of ICT4S
with the other groups/departments involved. and I would in student and researcher projects — timescales of production
have liked to be in more contact myself with the engineering are out of line with timescales of development; low-cost
department about the project. At the same time, several voted sensing is not robust for the environment and application; data
for having a smaller overall team: Too many people have accuracy is questionable for low-cost devices due to factory
led to a lack of accountability and many misdirections in calibration (or lack thereof); and so on. We are not the first
communication. and The number of people involved on the ones to experience these: Peter Lyle and colleagues reported
project should stay a little more limited to ensure more on similar ones [15] where they conducted a study using
accuracy and reliability for the project. ethnographically oriented methods of participant observation
The potential communication improvement was best and semi-structured interviews in a community garden in the
summed up by this student: If we could start again, I would city of Brisbane in Australia. They confirm Odom’s [28]
have liked to have a meeting with all of the people involved findings, who points out the potential value that could be added
with the project, and have had one group chat and one email by improving the visibility of urban agriculture projects.
chain including everyone, always. There is a reasonable argument to be made about whether
There were suggestions for a different technical platform: technology should even be trying to facilitate these small com-
If I had to start from scratch again I would definitely choose munal agricultural efforts, as put forth, for example: “Mate,
9
we don’t need a chip to tell us the soil’s dry”, by Odom [27], for arranging additional mandatory meetings. Consequently, it
and others on a more general level on when the implication will take a few strongly motivated and dedicated students to
is not to design [3]. We strongly agree with those notions enable an exploration of this cross-departmental development
and see that the strongest reason for doing this project was and implementation.
to check the feasibility of having a multidisciplinary project
across campus with quite a variety of stakeholders involved. VIII. C ONCLUSION
In a next step, we would be approaching a local community
to observe and learn and see where and how we can support In this paper, we reported on the set-up, discuss lessons
by adapting technology to their needs. Granted, that is limited learned from the pilot, and project future scenarios leverag-
by the limited success our experiment was able to contribute. ing the sustainability transformation mindset principles that
Lastly, while we were enthusiastic about applying Mann’s support transitioning towards teaching sustainable livelihood
Transformation Mindset Principles during the inception phase with the support of ICT. We harvested a significant amount of
of the project and reflected on them later on, we do see that kale and lettuce, despite the fact that the automatedly watered
the implementation falls short in terms of answering the bigger boxes yielded less harvest than the manually watered ones.
questions that inspired Mann’s work. This could be mitigated While we consider the conducted action research successful
in the future by developing an instrument that helps to tie the in terms of experience, insights and lessons learned for all
results of a project back into a debrief of the experience that participants, we also take a critical look at the research. In
includes a reflection of the Transformation Mindset Principles. the discussion of “undesigning” [33] and critiquing techno-
solutionism [21], [34], we can ask whether we shouldn’t just
VII. F UTURE W ORK hand-water vegetables in a personal garden anyways. In our
case the potential impact for education and the opportunity for
We used Mann et al.’s [16] sustainability transformation a cross-university collaboration was the more important factor
mindset as inspiration to draw a couple of scenarios building — and a collaboration between a computer science department
on what we did this semester. All of these scenarios have the and a family and consumer science department requires some
common goal of developing and designing sustainable food technology to be involved.
systems [31]. Broadening to a wider perspective, we should also ask
“What if sustainability doesn’t work out?” [35] and work
A. Community garden replication more towards resilient community building that can cope with
We are aiming for a replication in a Long Beach community limited resources [24].
garden, where we can interact with the general public and
build further bridges between the university and parts of the R EFERENCES
local community that are not necessary likely to interact much
[1] Muhammad Aqib. Advanced Garduino with Data Logging to Database,
with academia. While we would have wanted to replicate the 2017.
experiment this year in the garden where the first run was [2] Stephan Barthel and Christian Isendahl. Urban gardens, agriculture, and
conducted, the CSULB university garden will unfortunately water management: Sources of resilience for long-term food security in
cities. Ecological Economics, 86:224–234, 2013.
be taken out in its current form for a new building and the [3] Eric PS Baumer and M Silberman. When the implication is not to design
future location is unclear at this point. We are currently in (technology). In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human
negotiation for the future plot. Factors in Computing Systems, pages 2271–2274. ACM, 2011.
[4] Filipe Caetano, Rui Pitarma, and Pedro Reis. Advanced system for
garden irrigation management. In Advances in Intelligent Systems and
B. Companion planting design help Computing, volume 353, pages 565–574, 2015.
[5] Rashida M Crutchfield. Under a temporary roof and in the classroom:
In a related project, we would like to further the devel- Service agencies for youth who are homeless while enrolled in commu-
opment of a companion planting composer software [26], nity college. Child & Youth Services, 39(2-3):117–136, 2018.
[6] D. V. Daniels. Automatic Garden Watering Device - Arduino, 2016.
[25] for capturing native, local knowledge (“the wisdom of [7] Edyn. Edyn, 10 October 2017.
the community”). Permaculture practitioners hold a lot of [8] Martin Fowler and Jim Highsmith. The agile manifesto. Software
knowledge and it takes a lot of time and dedication for Development, 9(8):28–35, 2001.
[9] GreenIq. GreenIq, 2017.
beginners to get to a level where they can comfortably design [10] Libby Gustin and Virginia Gray. A Sustainable Cooking Show Inter-
their own gardens. Supporting software systems could ease vention to Address Barriers Contributing to Suboptimal Diets. J Nutr
that learning curve for permaculture design. Food Sci, 8, 2018.
[11] Hamza, A. How to Make an Arduino Temperature Data Logger, 2017.
[12] Iseman, L. Garduino: Geek Gardening with Arduino, 2012.
C. Cooking app collaboration [13] Jessica L Johnston, Jessica C Fanzo, and Bruce Cogill. Understanding
sustainable diets: a descriptive analysis of the determinants and processes
In further future collaboration with hospitality management, that influence diets and their impact on health, food security, and
we envision a cooking class supported by app development environmental sustainability. Advances in nutrition, 5(4):418–429, 2014.
[14] Sheila A Jones, Janelle Walter, LuAnn Soliah, and Janna T Phifer.
where cooks could capture their own recipes and have an Perceived motivators to home food preparation: focus group findings.
educational platform helping them improve their skills and get Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 114(10):1552–1556,
feedback from each other. This collaboration faces the same 2014.
[15] Peter Lyle, Jaz Hee-jeong Choi, and Marcus Foth. Hci for city farms:
time management challenges as the last one, as class times are Design challenges and opportunities. In IFIP Conference on Human-
prescribed by administration and instructors have little leeway Computer Interaction, pages 109–116. Springer, 2013.
10
[16] Samuel Mann. A transformation mindset for computing education for
sustainability. IADIS International Journal on Computer Science &
Information Systems, 12(2), 2017.
[17] Jonathan Margolis. Growing food in the desert: is this the solution to
the world’s food crisis, 2012.
[18] Maira Marques, Sergio Ochoa, Maria Cecilia Bastarrica, and Francisco
Gutierrez. Enhancing the Student Learning Experience in Software
Engineering Project Courses. IEEE Transactions on Education, accepted
for publication in 2017.
[19] Susanna Mills, Heather Brown, Wendy Wrieden, Martin White, and
Jean Adams. Frequency of eating home cooked meals and potential
benefits for diet and health: cross-sectional analysis of a population-
based cohort study. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and
Physical Activity, 14(1):109, 2017.
[20] Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Permaculture. Lesmurdie Progress
Association, 1978.
[21] Evgeny Morozov. To save everything, click here: The folly of techno-
logical solutionism. Public Affairs, 2013.
[22] Erin Murray, Susan Baker, and Garry Auld. Nutrition recommendations
critical to teach low-income adults in efnep: Us dietary guidelines expert
panel opinion. The FASEB Journal, 30(1 supplement):896–16, 2016.
[23] Erin K Murray, Susan Baker, and Garry Auld. Nutrition recommenda-
tions from the us dietary guidelines critical to teach low-income adults:
expert panel opinion. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,
118(2):201–203, 2018.
[24] Bonnie Nardi, Bill Tomlinson, Donald J Patterson, Jay Chen, Daniel
Pargman, Barath Raghavan, and Birgit Penzenstadler. Computing within
limits. Communications of the ACM, 61(10):86–93, 2018.
[25] Juliet Norton, Sahand Nayebaziz, Sean Burke, B Jack Pan, and Bill
Tomlinson. Plant guild composer: an interactive online system to support
back yard food production. In CHI’14 Extended Abstracts on Human
Factors in Computing Systems, pages 523–526. ACM, 2014.
[26] Juliet Norton, Alex J Stringfellow, Joseph J LaViola Jr, Birgit Penzen-
stadler, and Bill Tomlinson. Plant guild composer: A software system
for sustainability. In RE4SuSy@ RE, 2013.
[27] William Odom. Mate, we don’t need a chip to tell us the soil’s dry:
opportunities for designing interactive systems to support urban food
production. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Designing
Interactive Systems, pages 232–235. ACM, 2010.
[28] William Odom. “you don’t have to be a gardener to do urban agriculture:
Understanding opportunities for designing interactive technologies to
support urban food production”. Eat, Cook, Grow: Mixing Human-
Computer Interactions with Human-Food Interactions, page 177, 2014.
[29] Birgit Penzenstadler, Jayden Khakurel, Carl Plojo, Marinela Sanchez,
Ruben Marin, and Lam Tran. Resilient smart gardens—exploration of
a blueprint. Sustainability, 10(8):2654, 2018.
[30] Birgit Penzenstadler, Jason Plojo, Marinela Sanchez, Ruben Marin, Lam
Tran, and Jayden Khakurel. The diy resilient smart garden kit. In Proc.
of the Intl. Workshop on LIMITS, 2018.
[31] Ankita Raturi, Juliet Norton, Bill Tomlinson, Eli Blevis, and Lynn
Dombrowski. Designing sustainable food systems. In Proceedings of
the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in
Computing Systems, pages 609–616. ACM, 2017.
[32] Shannon M Robson, Lori E Crosby, and Lori J Stark. Eating dinner away
from home: perspectives of middle-to high-income parents. Appetite,
96:147–153, 2016.
[33] M Silberman, Lisa Nathan, Bran Knowles, Roy Bendor, Adrian Clear,
Maria Håkansson, Tawanna Dillahunt, and Jennifer Mankoff. Next steps
for sustainable hci. interactions, 21(5):66–69, 2014.
[34] Yolande Strengers. Smart energy in everyday life: are you designing for
resource man? interactions, 21(4):24–31, 2014.
[35] Bill Tomlinson, Donald J Patterson, Yue Pan, Eli Blevis, Bonnie Nardi,
Six Silberman, Juliet Norton, and Joseph J LaViola Jr. What if
sustainability doesn’t work out? interactions, 19(6):50–55, 2012.
[36] USDA. What is Sustainable Agriculture?, 2018. http://www.nal.usda.
gov/afsic/pubs/agnic/susag.shtml, Accessed April 9, 2019.
[37] Ankit Vashista, Harsh Rathore, and Gaurav Jain. Automatic Gardening
System using Arduino. SSRG International Journal of Electronics and
Communication Engineering, 3(8):119–120, 2016.
[38] Nancy S. Weinfield, Gregory Mills, Christine Borger, Maeve Gearing,
Theodore Macaluso, Jill Montaquila, and Sheila Zedlewski. Hunger
In America Study, 2014. https://www.feedingamerica.org/research/
hunger-in-america.
[39] Joanne Sin Wei Yeoh, Quynh Lê, Daniel R Terry, and Rosa McManamey.
Having enough cultural food? a qualitative exploration of the experiences
of migrants in a regional area of australia. J Food Research, 2014.