Botanical
Version 1.12
Members
Claudia Bourke - Team Leader
Hannah Walton - Designer
Nam Bui - Designer
Sydney Cunliffe - Designer
Background and Rationale
Families all around the world easily forget about their gardens and produce at home. This results in dead plants that may need to be removed or replaced, and produce, that was once fresh, going to waste. A significant impact of wasted produce is that it gets sent to landfills, where it causes serious harm to the environment. When produce is wasted, it turns into methane which is one of the strongest greenhouse gas contributors to global warming.
Another issue is that supermarkets and fruit stores sell large quantities of fruits and vegetables distributed from places that are far away which all rely on long distance transportation. This is bad for the environment as it relies heavily on fossil fuels (Lussier, 2018). A lot of their produce also ends up in landfill because either it doesn't look good enough to sell (even though most of the time it's perfectly okay to consume) or it doesn't sell in the time it takes before it goes rotten. Supermarkets also use plastic and packaging to transport and sell their produce which contributes to our landfill. Most fruit and vegetables are also sprayed with chemicals and pesticides that can harm our environment (Partridge, 2018).
A solution to this problem is Botanical. Botanical is a virtual gardening app aimed to educate kids aged 8-10 on how to grow plants. The app would sync up to their families garden or vegetable gardens in real life, at home. This would give kids the opportunity to experience nurturing a plant on a daily basis. It would teach future generations to live more sustainably in an environment that they can track and control virtually. It would also encourage them to grow their own produce at home rather than supporting unsustainable supermarket produce. Botanical would involve sending daily reminders (notifications) to ensure the plants are maintained and looked after appropriately. For example, there would be a reminder notification to water their plants or there is too much sun exposure, etc. Each day, as the kids consistently fulfill the app’s reminding tasks, they get to watch their plants grow and their garden expand in both real life and virtual worlds.
Target Audience
Botanical aims to target children aged 8-10 throughout the Oceanic region. This is because the purpose of Botanical is to educate children on how to maintain their gardens at home through a virtual and real life setting.
Gender: Boys and Girls
Age range: 8-10
Language: English
Geographic: Oceania
Target System: Google Play (Android)
Specific Aims
The main goal of this app is to educate kids that maintaining their gardens and produce can propose a meaningful solution to climate change. Through managing their plants on a daily basis, they are taught from a young age to nurture their gardens which may be implemented into their life as a habit or routine as they grow older. By bringing both the virtual and real-life worlds together, it creates the aspect of gardening more fun and interesting as kids can play between realities. This strays the perception that gardening could be considered a chore and promotes it in a positive lifestyle.
Specific aims:
Educate 9-10-year-olds on the importance of maintaining their gardens and produce.
Create awareness on minimising waste.
Bring real-life and virtual worlds together in the app to promote a growing, and healthy garden.
Design practical tasks that ensure the gardens in both worlds are maintained.
Sustainable Development Goals:
Botanical aligns and supports many of the Sustainable Development Goals, but particularly focuses on Quality Education (4) and Climate Action (13). Botanical will work in a way that promotes both of these goals together. This is because Botanical aims to educate children on the importance of sustainable living. Botanical would provide lifelong learning opportunities for 8-10-year-olds to implement sustainable practices into their daily lives. As well as creating an environment/tool that utilises natural resources in a productive and encouraging manner. We will ensure these Goals are utilised and showcased within the design of our app. This will be displayed through the aesthetic and overall mood of the app. We may potentially add in extra educational frames to allow the children to keep track of what they have learnt eg. how their plants are growing, the stages they are in etc. Implementing these goals into Botanical also increases the purpose of what our app stands for. We believe these goals will certify the success of our app.
Project Approach
During this project, we will be using Extreme Programming. Extreme Programming is a methodology that prioritises teamwork, communication, and feedback (Agile Methodology, 2021). It also involves focusing on constant development and customer satisfaction. This method uses short development cycles (sprints) (Agile Methodology, 2021). Breaking a large project into a series of smaller tasks makes it easier to manage and can lessen the likelihood of something going wrong. Our team will develop these smaller tasks, which will help create a productive and highly efficient environment.
We will implement the extreme programming methodology into our project by always working co-efficiently as a team and communicating weekly, so everyone is on the same page. No one from our group has experience developing apps, so we chose extreme programming as it involves getting a lot of feedback. We will need this so we can discuss as a group how we want to approach each challenge.
Because we have little experience developing apps, we will be testing our project from its initial stages. By collecting feedback, it will help further develop the final output of our application. This also allows us to spot any errors early on in the process.
Bibliography:
5 Important Types Of Agile Methodology (2021). (2021). Retrieved 30 March 2021, from https://www.jigsawacademy.com/blogs/product-management/types-of-agile-methodology/
Lussier, M. (2018). 5 Reasons To Grow Your Own Food. Retrieved 31 March 2021, from https://www.unh.edu/healthyunh/blog/nutrition/2018/05/5-reasons-grow-your-own-food
Partridge, F. (2018). Why we should grow our own veg. Retrieved 31 March 2021, from https://www.vegansociety.com/news/blog/why-we-should-grow-our-own-veg