Sustainable Design with Coconut Soil

What you read and see in this step is a visualization of our product service system in which we explained before. Since the development of all the touch points is very time consuming, we try to visualize what is more important for the explanation of the concept at this time. Later if we are granted the prize we could definitely work on many other aspects of the idea like a business plan, detailed brand identity, product identity, better service experience and so on.

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Idea

The idea is to make a product service system that engages people of different age in a fun and recreational social activity of learning, making and sharing which in turn could result in various sustainable outcomes in all product, service and system layers.
So the basic idea is to make a community of people around home farming of organic vegetables and fruits by Designing a service that could help members in learning of home farming processes, provide them with tools and mediums for fun and engaging home farming experience and finally help them in sharing or selling of the resulted organic food in an online or offline marketplace.
The soil and seeds, learning materials, some fun and interesting gardening tools and additional customizable products, different community services like a p2p marketplace, gamified community club and also a gamified communication campaign would be provided by the system to create an optimal product service system experience for different personas. The soil along with fun and customizable side products would be communicated as the Proflora mediums of enabling sustainability.

Detailed description

A. System

On the system level the business model would be service oriented or result oriented partnership. Meaning that instead of selling soil which would result in buyers wanting to pay or buy less and company wanting to be paid or sell more, the company would build a win win system in which it provides farming material and knowhow to enable the optimal experience and intuitivity of learning, home farming, making and sharing organic crops and then shares the profit of selling the organic vegetable and fruits with the community.This way both company and community would want less material use per harvested crops unit. The company would also be interested in helping the system improve or work better, since the success of the company is related to the quality of the services and the success of community members who are growing the food to be consumed or sold in Proflora market. This would guarantee sustainability on the system level.

B. Service experience

On the service experience level the community could focus on grannies and children- who have more spare time - as main personas and bring them together in a physical garden café to enable a kind of social sustainability. Grannies could help kids in growing foods and share their stories and experiences with them and in return kids could help with the chores and have fun learning interesting stories about sustainability expressed and told by grannies. Both could get promoted and improve based on their success compared to other groups in the community.

C. Product

On product level, we have the outcome which is organic and sustainable and could improve people’s lifestyle.

Distribution

The base pots with seeds and soil could be bought either from organic food stores or vending machines in cities or could be ordered online with customizable options which would be explained later. The resulted organic vegetable or fruits after farming process could be sold in an online market, in an offline garden café or farming café or even in an organic food store near the café.

Target groups

There are four types of personas benefiting from the PSS.

• Those who have time to grow organic food for themselves
• Those who have time to do it both for themselves and others too and would like to sell what they have made in the market
• Those who don’t have time and could just buy and consume organic products
• Those who do it for fun and occasionally could spend time for gardening or farming. There would also be special fast-growing easy caring plants for those who are interested but have no time.

All of the personas would have promotion and growth options in the community and could help in a way or another in bringing organic food, social sustainability and a sustainable business model to reality.

Side products

The included products are:

• A fashionable bag for transporting vases and pots (coming in different colors and designs)

• Story base gardening guide for kids and grannies

• Foldable pots with interesting designs that provides enough humidity and temperature for different plants by mechanical adjustment of environmental conditions. (For instance using reflectors to provide more heat for certain kind of plants and shelters for plants that need less light and so on ...)

• Fun and interesting gardening tools for kids and adults as well

• Decorative stands for flower or plant bags.

Packaging

The main packaging looks like a small flattened cube which could be folded up to a small box with designs printed on them (could be bought from vending machines or online and offline Proflora stores and garden café ) with a small gardening or farming story in a booklet attached to it. There could also be a customizing service to 3d print different form of vases and pots from coconut leaf, or make them by laser cutting and folding coconut fiber sheets. All could be selected and ordered online along with seeds and matching soil types.

Engaging younger generation

Customizable vases and limited edition plants for top rated members of the community, intuitive and easy material and knowhow access, fashionable bags and accessories, customer club,
gameful and story based communication system (like who is the most organic plant grower or how greener lifestyle one has or saving extincting plants challenge ) and many more fun and engaging growth mechanism, are the strategies to boost the service experience and engage younger generation in the Proflora PSS of learning, making and sharing organic vegetables, fruits and plants. 

Extension

There could be also a Proflora coin system to be used both as a point or reward for active members of the community and as a main currency for buying, growing, selling and shopping organic crops.
Moreover ready to farm Proflora vases along with fun and fashionable gardening tools could be used in schools and kindergartens to both teach sustainability and bring a fun time growing organic food for kids and students

Designers

Vahid Daem Inanloo

Zahra Aalinezhad