Verdancy - Undergraduate Capstone

A website focused on gardening with environmental impacts

Duration
6 months (Jan - June 2021)

Skills
Cross Functionality, Presentation Skills, Wireframing

Tools
Figma, Miro, React.JS

Team
Ana de las Alas, Jared Lai, Anna Zhou

What is Capstone?

Capstone is a cumulative final project for undergraduates in the Information School. Students identify a problem or need, and then develop the approach needed to address the problem, conduct the research and present the findings in both oral and written formats.

Final Proposal

Our team developed a web app aimed at helping beginner gardeners become more aware of their environmental impact at home.

Problem Context

Food production accounts for 25% of the worlds carbon emissions. Although it requires much bigger resources than the average gardener to tackle this problem, gardening and growing your own food has actual shown positive impacts in reducing one’s carbon foorprint for the individual. It has impacted carbon emissions to the point that gardeners can reduce an estimated amount of 68 lbs of CO2e emission per year.

We sought to answer...

Literature Review

We started out doing an extensive exploration on the studies and observations about gardening and its benefical impacts. Following this was market research, where we explored exisiting apps and products that were related to our problem statement.

Research Insights

We summarized our research to three insights that correlated to each of the three types of research that we had conducted.

Overall, we found that gardening has many positive benefits and can both impact people and the environment, but there aren’t any existing solutions that bridge these two topics together.

Solution Approach & Key Features

Seeing the gap between personal gardening and environmental impact, we wanted to create some bridge in bringing those two ideas together. We wanted to advocate gardening with a sustainable focus, and do it in a way that advocated for beginners.

design exploration

Once we had solidified the main features that we wanted to implement, it was time to start thinking about design.

We opted to stick to a more simple and blockish design, similar to the Bootstrap format. This would make it easier for the developers to plan ahead and have an easier time visualizing when building the product. We focused on our design to be information driven and easy for beginners in gardening.

Design Concept Validation

search through database
look for vegetables that you are interested in growing and learning more about

create customized gardens from personal interest
track your growing vegetables online

User Testing

get started with advice cards
If not sure where to start, advice cards can give you the need to know basics

learn from real time emissions impact
see how much carbon emissions you save when growing them

We went through multiple iterations of user research to validate three main concepts that were seen as shaky from our users.

1. Carbon Emissions
Gauge whether users understood what gCO2e meant

2. gCO2e Comparisons
Capture how users contextualize large carbon emission values

3. My Garden Functionality
Test the intuitiveness of adding and harvesting plants within My Garden

Professor + Class Feedback Cycle

Throughout the duration of out capstone project, our team would meet weekly with our Capstone class. Throughout the iterative design process, we could get feedback on our current outlines and designs with our professor and fellow classmates. This gave us time to reflect and iterate every week and we would be able to plan ahead for the next upcoming weeks.

Final Product

Gardening at home can offer huge benefits and make a positive impact on your carbon footprint. Verdancy is a place where gardeners and growers alike can keep track of their carbon emissions with the vegetables they grow.

choose what you grow

search through our database to learn more about the vegetables you can plant and harvest

maintain your vegetables online

manage all your vegetables in one place
and log the vegetables you harvest

learn how you make an impact at home
view the carbon emissions you saved and see how easy it is to reduce your carbon footprint

Noticing the gap between environmental impact and home gardening, we sought out to create a space for those to take home gardening to the next level. Our goal is to help you get a personalized understanding of what you grow and how it can leave a positive impact on the world.

We also wanted to build a platform for beginner gardeners in particular, giving them the resources and information they need to be a more successful, more environmentally conscious gardener.

See the video here!

jessica prasetyo