TOOLS
Business Models
NICO KORNEGOOR, TAMAY OUDHOF, KIM OVERWATER, JEAN RIEMERSMA
Business models was used to determine how we could earn money, as no company can exist without making profit. With the idea of learning and challenging children to grow plants making a lot of money did not seem to be the most obvious thing. We created a vision and determined our goals but on their own these did not show the obvious way we would earn money. Detailed cost estimates were created and the percentage of people that fall within the target group was researched. This was combined into a detailed estimation of the required investment and how much this investment would earn back.
3D Visualisation
NICO KORNEGOOR, MEGAN VAN MOOK, KIM OVERWATER, JEAN RIEMERSMA
The starters kit has been 3D-modeled in SolidWorks. During the tool 3D-visualisation the main focus was on Unity. In this program games and interactive 3D models can be made. This could have been implemented in this project, however the choice had been made to make an interactive application in Figma, since that it is easier to make and we did not have prior knowledge to program it.
Collaborative Design Challenges
TAMAY OUDHOF, KIM OVERWATER
With collaborative design challenges there was looked into the possibility of getting a patent, and what the advantages and disadvantages of that would be. The possibility to collaborate with the agriculture was also considered. The option is there to have companies of the agriculture invest in our company to have more name awareness. Also the possibility to collaborate with schools was considered. Eventually we didn’t look further into this, but it is mentioned in the recommendations.
Value Proposition
MEGAN VAN MOOK, TAMAY OUDHOF
PROBLEM
For parents it can seem like their children are disconnected with nature. Their children miss out on the feeling of getting their hands dirty, of growing and creating something just by themselves starting with just a seed.
SOLUTION
Sprout wants that to change, get children back in touch with nature. By gardening and growing the received plants, children start to be more conscious of the world around them. Think a little more about how special nature is and we hope eventually let this person think more about the environment. Because they grow their own plants; they will realize how vulnerable it is and that it takes careful care to keep.
BENEFITS
Research (Miller, 2007) shows that gardening is beneficial for children. This research is based on slightly younger children but states the following benefits:
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Sharing their knowledge about the world to other people;
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Conveying (and learning to process and manage) emotions;
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Developing important skills (initiative, self-confidence, responsibility, literacy, math, science skills); (1)
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Understand more about healthy eating says (Ratcliffe, Merrigan, Rogers, & Goldberg, 2009) (2)
And also get children enthusiastic about nature. It is an easy system that helps guide the child to create their own small garden and help them maintain it. The seeds and the tools to create this garden, delivered right to their doorstep.
ECOSYSTEM
An ecosystem looks at the different stakeholders and their interactions. The benefit of an ecosystem is that a visualization not only of human-human interactions, but also human-machine and machine-machine interactions can be made.
PAIN & GAIN
The value proposition canvas contains 2 elements. The left side is the value map and the right side is the customer profile. Using a value proposition canvas can help identify the values the product or service offers.
SERVICE BLUEPRINT
A service blueprint is a visualisation of the service a company provides. This visualisation is presented in a way the customer would portray this service in three stages, before, during and after. The visualisation shows the internal processes that are needed to offer the client a good customer experience, in a schematic manner. In the blueprint there is a line of visibility, below this the customer is unable to make any observations.
Virtual Reality and Andvanced Interaction
NICO KORNEGOOR, KIM OVERWATER, JEAN RIEMERSMA
For the sanning of the plants AR is used. The user scans the plant with the camera of it’s smartphone. The application will recognise plant specific characteristics and will show the user what has to be done to take care of the plant. The AR application was not developed into a working prototype but a mock up was made to show it’s possibilities. In order to decrease the computing power required and to decrease the amount of mistakes, the user has to select what plant they are going to scan. This was the AR application only has to recognise plant specific characteristics.
Maintenance
NICO KORNEGOOR, MEGAN VAN MOOK
Maintenance mostly consists of three pillars: maintainability, reliability and supportability. Each of these pillars has a number of rules which have to be applied when designing for maintenance. The products delivered to the user will not be designed to maintain, they are meant to be used and disposed of in a relatively short period of time. However, when creating an app, some aspects and rules of maintenance will also have to be taken into account. For this project, the app is only build as a user-interface, and no ‘real’ code has been created, however, a number of applicable rules, in the case of ‘real’ coding, are listed below:
Reliability
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Avoid unnecessary components to limit the number of components by eliminating the non-essential ones
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Design for under stressed use in normal situations: the system is used at less than full capacity
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Overdesign critical components larger than minimal required
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Choose materials that can withstand environmental influences
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Use components and materials with verified reliability to minimise the chance of unexpected system behaviour
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Design robust interfaces between components because their interaction has a strong influence on the reliability of the system
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Use parallel subsystems and components
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Distribute workload equally over parallel subsystems or components
Maintainability
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Use materials that do not prolong the maintenance activities
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Use standard, universal applicable components
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Ensure that the operators of installations are also able to maintain them
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Provide sufficient space around the maintenance points
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Components that are regularly replaced need to be easy to handle
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Design modular
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Use standard interface to enable quick connection
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Design the weakest link to ease the replacement
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Position components that need to be maintained at an easily accessible place
Supportability
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Save the right life time data
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Avoid secondary tasks that consume a lot of time
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Design for the use of standard tools
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Design the system in such a way that adequate forecasting of maintenance is possible
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Build monitoring equipment into the system
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Provide understandable maintenance instructions
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Personnel with a variety of backgrounds should be able to execute maintenance
User Interface Design and Simulation
MEGAN VAN MOOK, JEAN RIEMERSMA
In combination with the tool Virtual Reality and Advanced Interaction a demo was created which shows the workings of the scanner-function.
All interactive images and pages found on this site are created using Figma. The video showing the circulation of the app is created with both Figma and powerpoint. It shows the action and features possible in the app.
Furthermore was a simulation created in which the viewer of the report-website gets a taste of the Sprout-website. A small task is given: Complete the ordering process, order a kit of your liking.
Expert Meeting
NICO KORNEGOOR, TAMAY OUDHOF, KIM OVERWATER
Expert Meeting helps to answer questions or problems encountered while working on the project. It took us longer than expected to figure out what the basis of our idea was, so during expert meeting we haven’t asked as many questions as we could have. We did ask Illanit for help and benefited a lot from this. Reflecting back on our process, we should’ve worked further on our idea instead of trying to perfect our idea so much.
Infographics
NICO KORNEGOOR, TAMAY OUDHOF, KIM OVERWATER
Infographics was used to make growing plants easy and accessible for children. This is done combining infographics and instruction design. With every package of seeds an infographic is send containing an all you need to know about growing that type of plant. This is done in a way, it is understandable for children. The infographic is a booklet that contains information about taking care of the plant, a did-you-know section with interesting information and a page where the seeds are placed. The infographic is colorful and written with as little words as possible to make it understandable for children, while also containing enough information for them to be able to grow the plants successfully.
Instruction Design
MEGAN VAN MOOK, TAMAY OUDHOF, JEAN RIEMERSMA
With every package of seeds an infographic is send containing an all you need to know about growing that type of plant. This is done in a way, it is understandable for children. The infographic is a booklet that contains information about taking care of the plant, a did-you-know section with interesting information and a page where the seeds are placed. The infographic is colorful and written with as little words as possible to make it understandable for children, while also containing enough information for them to be able to grow the plants successfully. Furthermore an instruction design on how to plant the seeds is displayed on the card. More information about growing the plant can always be found in the application.
Website Development
MEGAN VAN MOOK, JEAN RIEMERSMA
For website development information was given about how to develop websites. The report was made in wix, where you can build a free website. It was first intended to make the report in wordpress, but wordpress is very limited in the free version. We didn’t use this tool for more things, since there were no things where a website could be useful.