School gardens can help children learn better and practice healthier eating habits. Why aren't there more school gardens? San Diego K-12 teachers need a tool for collaboration in order to share resources, hold discussions, and spread awareness about the benefits of school gardens for young students.

Client (Kaylie and SDCS): Kaylie Caires from the San Diego Conservation District is invested in this project because she works for the School Garden project. She is a main point of contact and is also one of the main individuals to benefit from the development of a centralized website.

Development Team: Our team of developers holds much power because we are implementing the desired solution to the problem.

San Diego School District (SDSD): The schools in the SDSD that currently have a garden will benefit greatly from having a centralized website. Since all information will be easily obtained, this could offer an incentive for schools without gardens to create their own garden for the project.

Teachers/Faculty: School teachers, faculty, and staff will hold much power in their ability to build a curriculum for young children that revolves around the school garden community. These educators will be shaping the minds of the youth.

Students/Children: The young school children will be highly influenced from this project because they will be learning about nutrition, agriculture, nature and other vast school subjects with the formation of these gardens on school property.

Parents: This group relies heavily on academia to equip their children with the tools required to make informed decisions in their daily lives. When it comes to food, nutritional habits lay the foundation for an individual’s sense of well-being, both physically and mentally. Informing children about healthy food options at an early age will allow them to carry these habits into adulthood.

Gardeners: Increased number of gardens throughout San Diego will allow for more employment opportunities for gardeners to maintain them.

Volunteers: The gardens will allow for community service opportunities for people from all walks of life, particularly student interns and members of the community.

Political context: Since school gardens are generally located at public schools within California, they are regulated by the same guidelines enforced by the State of California Department of Education. From a political standpoint, there are few factors to take into consideration in regards to the project.

Economic context: The main funding for school gardens will come largely from grants and donations. Other factors that will affect the project will be comprised primarily of funding to host a domain for the website, and the fees associated with the long term upkeep of the website. Upkeep fees could include forum administrative assistance fees, graphic design fees, and fees associated with the creation and renewal of website content.

Sociocultural context: The website will be used by a wide demographic. The age demographics can vary from under the age of 18 to 65+. As such, the website needs to ensure it is usable by those with just basic knowledge of computers and the internet. We will need to explore different forum styles that will be easily usable by all potential users. Facebook is one option, but those individuals who are less tech-savvy may be less inclined to create a Facebook account just for the purpose of using the RCD garden website. We must also consider accessibility for older users and those will disabilities.

Technological context: Some technological factors have been discussed in the Sociocultural context section. The internet, in general must be considered to be a factor since our product is a website. We must consider internet security to ensure that the website is protected from hackers. Furthermore, since technology is constantly changing, the website must be able to adapt as new technologies become available. We need to consider cross-browser usability; for instance, can we use the site reliably on both Firefox and Chrome? Also, different viewports (mobile, computer, etc…) can change the way a website is viewed by a user; Mobile compatibility is crucial for websites nowadays so we must also consider this factor.

Legal context: From a legal perspective, our project must follow the legal guidelines of having a public website in the United States. Furthermore,the website must not violate one or more of the five major legal concerns of building a website. These include copyright, domain name, trademark, defamation, and linking concerns. In general, most of these will not apply to the RCD website, but we must ensure that all RCD content is original to be able to include written and graphic portions of the website.

Environmental context: Although the school garden project itself has many environmental factors to consider, the website has few. However, the environmental footprint of the website must be considered. The website will have low amounts of traffic and will require relatively little upkeep. Another concern could be natural disasters which can potentially cause the website to be down. This is still of little significance due to the nature of the website; no one will need immediate website access and thus can wait until the website is back online.

We created three distinct personas of the main user groups that will be utilizing our teacher collaboration tool. This will be helpful in incorporating user goals, needs, and interests that we gathered thus far. The composite character profiles are:

Teachers: Teachers within the San Diego School District will be the main users of the site. They will be able to post updates about the school gardens as well as provide information about how community members and students can get involved. The demographic of teachers using the site will consist of educated adults, ranging from 25-60 years of age. They will come from varying backgrounds and fields of study. With such a wide range of ages, we have to consider the possibility that technological factors could hinder an older group from being able to navigate the site easily and efficiently.

Students: Students will not be the main users of the site, but they will benefit greatly from the many assets a school garden offers to their community. Students will range from K-12 and will be between 7-18 years old. Some of the specific benefits the students will receive will be education surrounding nutrition and environmental science. They will be empowered to use what they learn to make informed decisions with regards to healthy food options. Our site will serve as an educational tool that supplements the class curriculum.

Community Members: Community members will be the backbone that supports the success of the school gardens. We will take into account students’ parents, teachers, and especially volunteers from San Diego County. Their ages will range from 16-65 years old. Since there is little to no funding for the school gardens, it is essential that volunteers from the community assist with the maintenance of the gardens. The site will be designed so that it is easy to navigate for someone who wants to get information about how to get involved. The presence of community members and volunteers in the site’s forums will be crucial for this project’s success, and in turn, the school gardens’ success.

To create a high-quality user experience, I created an empathy map to understand and gain deeper insights from our personas. While we focused on the needs and interests for these personas, the empathy map uncovers what the persona sees, thinks/feels, hears, gains, and is challenged by. I created an empathy map for one persona who specifically worked on a non-profit for school and community gardens and also used to teach at my alma mater, a local San Diego high school. Some of the key user needs that I uncovered from having conducted the interviews were that the website could and should incorporate: a simple user friendly design, visuals with tutorials, guides, and images, listings of plants and soil types as well as the pros and cons of each, a landscape and plant estimation application, and a directory of other schools with gardens in the San Diego School District. Some of the underlying motivations I found that drive our users’ desires and behaviors were that nature is important to people’s well-being, visual learning is important, and education through gardening extends to literature, history, and the sciences. There was also an awareness and interest in drought tolerant plants and the associated landscaping methods.

The Teacher Collaboration Tool is a website that houses school garden resources and information for communities and teachers to get involved in teaching students the importance of gardening. Our client was Kaylie Caires from the San Diego Resource Conservation District, whose mission is to protect, conserve, and restore natural resources through education, information and technical assistance programs. We decided to create a website that provides all necessary information about how to start a school garden and upkeep, as well as map/directory of other school gardens, lessons and curriculum, funding, and forums for communication.

Technical Requirements
- Utilizes a website hosting service that will inexpensively host the website.
- Utilizes software that will allow admins to easily change and update information on the website.
- A website that is designed with ease-of-use in mind, both in terms of everyday use and technical administration.
- It should be compatible with all types of devices (mobile and desktop) and various screen sizes.

Information/Resources
- Needs to hold information for teachers to start/maintain their own gardens
- Location
- Grants/Funds
- Volunteers
- Water
- Sunlight
- Seeds
- Curriculum
- General gardening knowledge

Networking Requirements
- Provide a way for teachers and students to communicate with each other, such as social media.
- Provide information about when the next networking session is (Interviews show this is most effective).

Economic Requirements
- Website must not cost an excess of $100 initially
- Website must be cheaper than $20/month

1. San Diego Regional School Garden Resource Center​
The bulk of the gardening aspect of this website acts as a central hub to attempt to connect the user with a variety of gardening hubs. A user who navigates this site will have the opportunity to pick from many useful and relevant organizations. Although this polestar of information does an excellent job of finding a niche community for any San Diego gardener, it lacks the interactivity and unification to keep the user’s attention. It essentially acts to direct users to other websites. While this feature may serve other purposes, it leaves little reason for a consumer to stay or visit site again. It’s lack of communal consolidation may also escape our target audience. Our client desires something that unifies our regional gardening communities, but this page does the opposite by solely directing interested parties to autonomous groups. Our site will serve not only as a port, but a center for all San Diego gardening communities.

2. Master Gardener Association of San Diego County
This website contains several desired features that we want to incorporate in our website. They provide a comprehensive list of nearby community gardens, calendar of events, resources on how to start a garden, as well as a virtually dedicated staff present to answer any further questions that an aspiring gardener might have. Despite the institution’s impressive presentation, it is still missing one particular key element. Having the option to contact the association nearly any hour of the day, the website risks one of two issues. First, someone may not always be present to receive a question and it may get lost or forgotten. Also, if every question were to be answered in a timely manner, it would require site administrators to constantly be monitoring incoming inquiries. A forum would effectively solve both problems and will be one of the main aspects to our site.

3. Collective School Garden Network
This network’s primary function is to get a school started in creating a garden. It effectively lays out clear and detailed plans from reasons to start a garden to promoting the finished product. It also supports and teaches the the edible aspects of gardens, including its importance and instructions on how to maintain it. The site also provides easy to access information on grants and funding. This information is very important for public schools that depend on grants to fund their projects. While their niche is paramount, the network fails to work effectively on a local level. It functions to serve all of California and even some parts of Arizona, which is something that may deter our San Diego community.

4. California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom
Users of this site will be able to find just about anything they need to incorporate gardening into the classroom setting. There is an abundance of comprehensive lesson plans, programs, and scholarship information. It also includes interactive news and a hub for students to interact with the site. The site’s ability to connect and inform both teachers and students is pivotal in an educational community. However, a forum seems to be a better solution for this to encourage interactivity amongst educators or students.

5. California Native Plant Society – San Diego Chapter
A local San Diego chapter of a large organization superbly connects a regional community with a much larger and more resourceful body. Their ability to adequately mesh national and regional groups allows for large scale supply and supports contributions. The site is frequently updated and contains a list of many events and organizational meetings that works to consolidate the community. However, this setup also encourages the disconnection from the general public and provides little information for educators. Although the meetings help keep the community up to speed and intact, those who have a busy schedule and are unable to attend will be alienated. The lack of resources for teachers also demonstrates a huge disadvantage for our target users. A forum may easily facilitate a transition for those unfamiliar with school gardens to gain knowledge quickly due to the posted discussions and resources. These aspects are critical to our design and must certainly be included.

In order to develop a concept that would best satisfy the needs of our client and users, we used various approaches to brainstorm possible solutions. By using the information obtained from interviews with stakeholders as well as inspiration from existing solutions, we were able to develop a variety of different designs that emphasize simplicity for our users and affordability for our client.

Wordpress + Facebook Concept: An eco-friendly, green colored theme will be aesthetically fitting for a school garden website. The Wordpress theme was specifically chosen for its intuitive navigation and the look-and-feel that it reflects on the client’s school gardens project. We also believe that its professional design caters very well towards attracting affiliates, sponsors and members of the community. Visitors will be able to locate any relevant information such as school garden locations through a directory listing and a Google Map, along with staff information with contact details. With the site running entirely within WordPress, its functionality can be easily extended upon with plugins if additional features are desired in the future. WordPress also provides a menu-driven management environment, and thus, the website will not require a high level of technical expertise to administer.
Furthermore, keeping in mind our client’s specification for easy administration and low technical barrier in regards to the communicative aspect of the project, we think that a custom-designed Facebook page will be able facilitate community discussion and involvement. Users visiting the site will likely have a Facebook account, which takes care of account registration and authentication. Facebook also provides much of the tooling for management of the page, which eliminates database and server-side scripting setup, management and security. The client can also advertise the school gardens page via Facebook’s advertising platform for optimal exposure to interested groups.



Wikia Concept: A Wiki-style concept is viable as it is already branded as a centralized, online encyclopedia that has been used by most users as a go-to learning tool. A Wikia based page allows any user, whether tech savvy or not, to be able to easily navigate through its pages to find text and image based information and resources in one single place. It is also contributable and editable, so that any outdated or ambiguous information can easily be updated as needed. It is a simple website that focuses on the need for a platform that provides quick and accessible information on projects, topics, resources, guides, and tutorials. The sharing of information onto the Wikia page will help spread the awareness of school gardens even to the general public. A unique feature of a Wikia is its simplistic design with a navigation tab that organizes the all the pages within the Wikia. As you can see below, the popular pages tab has 3 links, which allows pages to be organized accordingly. Users can easily search, edit, or add information any way they please in their respective categories. A user can click on the “contribute” button, and choose to add or edit page wherever they are in the Wikia. They can also input text and upload images directly from the post page dynamically.



San Diego Resource Conservation District Subreddit (/r/sdschoolgardens): A Subreddit style website that encourages social discussions will be helpful in promoting relevant news and volunteer opportunities that encourage participation and involvement within the school garden community. A Subreddit concept is intended for all the potential users of the garden resource site, but most importantly it allows for an easily moderated forum for communication between users. This popular forum is well tested and proven efficient as demonstrated by countless active subreddits today, and it would solve the communication issue. Reddit’s option to store both links and text-based information also takes care of any potential information problem as well. As far as participation goes, there are a few features that account for it as well. The site’s use of private messaging and user-specific accounts permits a more personalized communication between users, which would be good for those who shy away from actively posting on a public board. Another metaphorical feature like the “Sticky” posts on Reddit, which remain visible to everyone at all times could be useful for announcing any upcoming events, meetings and/or volunteer opportunities. In terms of aesthetics, Reddit currently is graphically unappealing. Perhaps one of the most appealing benefits of Reddit is that it has zero costs associated with it, and given our tight budget, that is vital. With the combination of these mentioned Reddit-like features, we may be able to tackle the three main issues regarding information, participation, and communication.

The testers of our 3 prototypes/websites were two students. We gave both students the task of navigating through the demo, mock-up version of the Wordpress themed website, Wikia site, and a Reddit site (the main homepage of these sites are pictured on pages 13-15). We had them use and compare all three of these sites and gathered feedback about what features they liked/disliked and what worked/didn’t work for each of them.

Desirability & Usability
1. Wordpress + Facebook:
The users found the Wordpress site to be acceptable. Since the site is not complete, the evaluation consisted of looking over the highlights of the site and discussing future added features. They found the site to be aesthetically pleasing and intuitive since all required tabs are accessible on the main page. The Facebook portion is not yet implemented but both users are active members. The site works well overall but lacks a way to find gardens.



2. Wikia:
Both users found the Wikia site to be less preferable than the Wordpress/traditional site. They noted that Wikia is less visually appealing, “clunky”, and not as intuitive as the Wordpress site. This may be because of the abundance in text and lack of images. The user is concerned with the lack of features and the freedom to add features. Another concern was that the Wikia is prone to user error because of the way the pages tend to be hidden deeply within each other. However, one user did like the simplicity of the site and indicated that having a Wikia would be nice but only an addition to the project’s own site. The user also indicated that the ability to add information to the Wikia, dynamically, is very appealing since it allows the site to easily change as the project grows.



3. Subreddit:
The user finds the reddit page to be acceptable but less acceptable than the Wordpress/traditional site. The user finds the idea of having a forum style website as appealing but is concerned that this will overshadow other requirements of the website. Other concerns are that the reddit site is not visually appealing and not intuitive to use. While the reddit site does have a dedicated area for a Wiki and a sidebar for information, these are hard to find intuitively which leaves the site open to user error. Another concern is user safety in regards to the forum. Since anyone can post to the forum we will need to ensure that comments and posts are moderated frequently. In order to mitigate these concerns, we will require the reddit page to be private/by-invite only.

Feasibility
1. Wordpress + Facebook:
The technological capabilities of the development team will play a significant role in implementing the website using Wordpress. The developer must have prior experience or knowledge working with this open source website creation tool. Since Wordpress offers their own themes, there will not be a need for the significant use of HTML/CSS for design and styling. The creation and implementation of the site is definitely feasible as our development team is familiar with the platform. However, this can only be done with the consent of San Diego Resource Conservation District because they will be funding this project. The solution will be reliable because it is able to encompass all of the specified content and features desired by the client.

2. Wikia:
Human and technological capabilities needed to create and deliver with the Wikia would ideally be a user that has experience with wiki-style websites. However, those who are decently internet savvy can easily learn to publish and edit on the Wikia for all users to see. The capabilities that it may be lacking is the overall simplicity of the layout, as some users seemed overwhelmed by the substantial amount of text. Although many users are already familiar with a wiki-style page with the sole purpose of looking up information, an inexperienced user may find it challenging or unmotivated to share, contribute, or edit information on the page. This will be conflicting if we want to be encouraging interactivity.

3. Subreddit:
A reddit page is rather simple to create and implement and can be done easily by our team. The client initially requested some type of forum, and given Reddit’s reputation of being a social forum with every possible topic up for discussion, we thought it would be feasible to implement this concept. This solution has the potential to perform reliably in this given context for teachers to collaboratively post and share information.

Economic Sustainability
1. Wordpress + Facebook:
The cost of hosting a website is $3.99 per month with GoDaddy, which is amongst one of the most affordable web hosting providers. Wordpress has an extensive library of pre-built themes with management through an intuitive web interface. The green Wordpress theme that we thought fitting for a school gardens website requires a one-time fee of $49. Having to keep in mind our client’s expectations of the website being low-cost and easy to maintain, this concept would still be an affordable solution. Although it isn’t entirely free, it can still provide an optimal scenario for establishing financial security, self-sufficiency and economic sustainability with just a low monthly hosting fee.

2. Wikia:
There is no associated cost to implement, use, or maintain a Wikia account for the users. Because it is a free service, the users’ financial security and self-sufficiency won’t be at risk. However, they will need to pay for their own internet access, of course.

3. Subreddit:
Creating and using a subreddit is completely free, so it permits complete financial security and self-sufficiency for any stakeholder involved. One thing to consider is that depending on the activity level of a subreddit, it may require paying someone to moderate the subreddit. As an alternative to this, programs can be written to automatically moderate the subreddit and lessen both the workload and salary of the human moderator.

Concept Selection
Our team made a Pugh Chart to help develop a final concept in collaboration with key stakeholders. The first concept of Wordpress and Facebook was used as a baseline reference in determining how the other two concepts compared in regards to the overall simplicity of use, educational satisfaction, aesthetics, and affordability.

Simplicity - We found that users rated this to be of high importance. Because our potential users will consist of young children to older adults, we want the site to be easy to navigate for non-tech savvy users.

Education - This is an important aspect because successfully meeting this criteria can lead to the school garden project becoming more recognized in the community

Aesthetics - a visually pleasing website would attract more visitors onto the site.

Affordability - Cost plays a major role in the implementation of the project.

After calculating the weighted total, we found that both the Wikia and Reddit concept had a lower than baseline score. Thus, after compiling our analysis and research we gathered per our client’s requests, need-finding interviews, and the feedback received from user testing as well as thoroughly evaluating the requirements and needs for each concept, we chose the Wordpress and Facebook concept to be the winner.

Design Overview
Since our goal is to create a garden-based teacher collaboration tool, we have designed a Wordpress themed website in addition to a separate Facebook group that will allow all teachers from the San Diego school district to communicate with one another. Our main homepage utilizes an eco-friendly theme. In order to propel the school garden initiative, we sought to include visually appealing photos on the main page so that our target users would want to interact with the site more. The key tabs we included at the top are “garden locations”, “community” and an “about us” page. The simplistic nature of the website will allow users to easily navigate between pages to access the information that they are seeking. Thus, we have addressed the aesthetic and simplicity criteria from our concept evaluation.



A separate Facebook group for “San Diego School Gardens” essentially allows for organized and moderated communication for users to discuss ideas, problems or stories. With this social platform, users may continue to improve the site by giving their personal inputs. Once this page has recruited many of those involved in the school garden initiative, we believe that it will have the capabilities to reach out to volunteers in the community and connect them with schools that need help with the gardening related maintenance.



Detailed Design
The website utilizes a WordPress template that features an eco-friendly theme. We felt this style of theme would be most appropriate since many of those who will be involved in the project will be environmentally-minded. The theme was developed by a company known as Ancora Themes and it consists of all the languages required to display the site. Languages identified within the theme are HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript. As stated by the client, the site should be easy to use and manage. In an effort to achieve this, the theme is designed with a minimalistic approach and WordPress provides an intuitive management interface for administrating and maintaining the site. The site is also “responsive”, meaning that it will display on all types of screen sizes such as desktops, tablets and mobile devices.

Furthermore, another important feature that our client requested was a list and map of all the school garden locations. Therefore, we created a “Garden Locations” tab, and there will be a drop-down list of school gardens, a brief description about each, and its relative location that will be shown using Google maps.





The client also wanted a place where community discussion and announcements can take place, which we decided to implement through the use of a Facebook page. Since a lot of the people involved in the San Diego School Gardens project will likely have a Facebook account, this makes community outreach much easier and greatly enhances the project’s growth with a higher community adoption rate. Facebook also has an advertising platform for Facebook pages, so the San Diego School Gardens project can be advertised to all of San Diego with little to no difficulty as they expand their reach.

Implementation
We chose to implement the Wordpress and Facebook theme because it gave us many advantages over other solutions. We started with an initial template. Based on input from our interviews, multiple team members shared ideas in regards to how the site should be structured and formatted. After sharing our ideas with both our head developer, Chris, and client, our development team worked with Chris to build each aspect of the site from an interactive list of community gardens in the area to a page for teachers to share documents. Simultaneously other team members created a Facebook page to facilitate communication between users. A link to it was also added onto the WordPress site.

During the implementation process, there were several things we needed to take into consideration when dealing with stakeholders. First, we needed to onboard our client. While the site will be intuitive for users, the actual mechanisms to modify and add to the site from an administrative perspective are a bit more difficult. To counter this, we will be providing a manual for our client to use as a guide when editing the site. This will provide an efficient, moderative transition from the development team to the client.

Assessment
The purpose of our solution was to build a centralized, easily maintainable, forum-based website to serve as the main teacher collaboration tool for the San Diego Resource Conservation District. The website is successful in meeting certain specific requirements. First, the need of having a forum is satisfied by the use of a Facebook page. The Facebook page allows a majority of people to log in and connect with other community members. Users can make posts or comments, and seek help from others. While familiarity with Facebook is relatively high amongst the potential users of the site, we needed to take into account that some users might not be as familiar with it or not have an account set up already, and thus will be less likely to utilize that aspect of the website.

Another key need of the website was that the it provides access to information regarding the School Garden project in a centralized location. All of the pertinent information within the requirements can be easily accessed at a location that is linked directly from the homepage of the website. However, one potential problem with information storage on the site is that any changes and updates to information will need to be added to the site via WordPress. This will require someone who is tech-savvy or has experience using the platform. In order to alleviate this problem, future administrators are instructed to become more familiar with the WordPress development platform.

Providing a comprehensive list and locations of San Diego school gardens is solved by our implementation of a list of gardens and their relevant pinned locations on Google Maps within the site. This allows the users to easily read the locations of nearby community gardens and also see the locations in a visual format. The upside of using Google Maps is that its existing technology requires no upkeep. The only requirement of the website administrators is that they update the map periodically, which is not difficult to do.

As discussed earlier, a requirement of the tool was easy maintainability. While WordPress is fairly easy to use, it does require some practice for users to maintain the site via the platform. However, our team is confident that with our instruction manual, it can be learned.

Our goal was to develop a website that will serve as a teacher collaboration tool for teachers in the San Diego School District and took a Human Centered Design approach by empathizing with our users and clients to design a meaningful product that meets their needs. School gardens can help children learn better and practice healthier eating habits. San Diego K-12 teachers could benefit from a tool for collaboration in order to share resources, hold discussions, and spread awareness about the benefits of school gardens for young students. Our target users are teachers, students, and community members.

We selected a WordPress and Facebook concept, Wikia concept, and a Subreddit concept and assessed their features/benefits. We performed research and analysis for each of our three concepts to determine how each meets the design requirements of desirability, usability, feasibility, and sustainability. The concept chosen was Wordpress and Facebook. Using Wordpress, we chose to include a list of school gardens, a viewable location of gardens in San Diego with Google Maps feature, and an About page within the website. We evaluated and iterated on our design until the functionality was complete.

Considering that we have included a user manual for the ongoing maintenance of website, it could be a viable option to have future Design for Development students to partake in reiterating our design after having our target users interact with our implementation. With more user testing, input and feedback, and prototyping, we would only gain more empathy with our users to better meet their needs.

The takeaways from this project was that I had trouble trying to gauge who would be the users. It was a very niche platform, for niche communities. Not only was it targeting schools, but teachers who are even remotely interested in gardening, which I believed was difficult to find. I used to have an environmental science teacher at my high school who taught us about hydroponics, thinking that she would be a perfect user to interview and find needs. However, she retired from the school but fortunately I found out the community outreach director had actually tried to create a committee on school gardening. That interview was highly fruitful, but I was concerned on that it was a single person. We conducted phone and email interviews of other potential users, but in total we only had a handful of responses.

I felt as if I didn't fulfill my role enough as user liaison, but it was very difficult finding and communicating with users in general, especially the client who was not very consistent, which is why the website was not published. I believe I could've done better as user liaison if I had at least kept in contact with that director and the other participants we contacted, to walk them through the prototypes and concepts instead of only asking the client. We could've gotten more feedback that way instead of asking students to test our concepts.