DURATION : 3 months                                ROLE : Research, user research, prototyping                                TEAM : Blanche Dujardin, Lucas De Pinho, Pauline                                                                                                                                                   Boittiaux & me

Every year, the number of farmers is decreasing. Faced with this observation, Proscitec, an association whose aim is to promote the heritage of trades and industries in the Haut-de-France region, has come to us with this problem:

ANALYSIS

Our team first decided to do some research on the internet in order to understand the world of agriculture and why the future generation is reluctant to turn to it. We took the opportunity to note down possible contacts for interviews.

In order to complete our research, we decided to interview several farmers and agricultural students, in order to understand:

• Why they chose this profession
• Where does their passion for this job come from?
• The difficulties they encounters

We ended up with a lot of information. We created 2 system maps in order to visualise this complex system, its actors and its weak points.

In order to understand their consumption habits and knowledge, we launched a questionnaire (56 answers) and went directly to where they consume (organic, local, discount and supermarkets).

We decided to focus on the students because they tend to change their consumption habits and are looking for themselves.
Moreover, we have found that they are the ones who are most disconnected from the farming world and who visit local and organic shops the least, what the farmers had already told us in previous interviews.

Price was the main argument for not consuming local, so we compared prices directly on the spot (local shops, organic shops, supermarket, market, discount). The result was that the best value for money can be found in local shops and markets, the products are often cheaper than in the supermarket or slightly more expensive for higher quality. 

We then launched a survey aimed at students only this time, in order to understand their lifestyle, to have more details about their eating habits, their ways of consuming, their criteria of choice and their motivations.

• The results showed that they :
• Have a lack of connection with nature
• Learn how to manage a budget for the first time Enjoy meeting new people, exploring and discovering
• Are sensitive to the environmental cause and are willing to change their lifestyle to do so.

1. Creating a farmer/consumer link

2. Strengthening consumers' knowledge of agriculture

3. Creating an engaging experience

4. Our solution must benefit the consumer as much as the farmer.

IDEATION

We came up with the worst possible ideas to bounce back on. Unfortunately, it didn't work for half of us: we were stuck on the negative idea.

We mimicked the work of the farmer and the role of the consumer.

First of all, we have selected 3 pre-concepts. To help us develop them we distributed roles to each one (judge, futurologist, banker, ecologist) which allowed us to raise problems we would not have thought of.

We determined the feedbacks we needed from users and created tools to collect them in a workshop.

Before interviews, we shared with them an explanatory video for each concept to collect their feedbacks in order to find out :

• If they would be interested and why
• What they think is possible or not from their experience
• The budget they would be willing to put

We then evaluated each concept in relation to these feedback but also in relation to our challenges.
We choose the university farm: an opportunity for students to build a farm in partnership with a farmer.

DEVELOPMENT

First of all we analysed the existing university gardens and concluded that for our solution to work we need :

• The information must be easy to obtain
• A beginner should easily be and feel integrated.
• Students must remain motivated to avoid the plots being abandoned.
• The garden should be in the university and be attractive.

We interviewed students in order to understand their motivations, why they entered or left an association:

• Communication around the association plays an essential role.
• Events make them feel more involved
• They want to be able to relax and meet new people.
• They must be able to manage their time in the association according to their own schedule.

In order to understand how a student association is created, the steps and efforts required, we conducted semi-structured interviews with members of student associations: we asked them to rank the steps in a scenario for the development of the farm in the university, and then we  ask questions based on their choice.

We arrived at this scenario and highlighted the key moments when we had to intervene and how.
Then, we developed each of the necessary tools.

One of the most important and complicated is the writing of the rules, so we set up some questions in order to help the students to write it and not to forget any essential point: to be sure to classify them well and not to have forgotten anything we have conducted open card sorting sessions.

This project taught me a lot about user research and the different ways to boost creativity. I think it is one of the projects that has moved me the most and impacted me the most. I was very disconnected from the agricultural world and meeting these passionate but struggling farmers really made me aware of the negative consequences of my consumption.
My biggest regret is that we didn't have the opportunity to set up this vegetable garden directly in a university and therefore to test our service in the field. To know if this project would really work it would take us at least a year to get feedback and improve it.