Dr Peter Lyle

BComp (Hons1) UTAS

Growing Food in the City: A Study across Interaction Design and Urban Agriculture

Growing food in urban environments is a form of urban agriculture, practised individually and in groups. In a world with sophisticated industrial scale agriculture in rural spaces and rising costs of land in urban environments, growing food in urban environments involves a degree of effort on the part of gardeners. Encouraging residents to begin and continue gardening has a number of documented positive impacts on areas such as: health, food security, poverty alleviation, and ecological sustainability.

The study of urban agriculture from an interaction design perspective is a recent phenomenon as part of the community of human-computer interaction researchers interested in questions of sustainability. This presents an opportunity – explored by this thesis – to understand the ways that individuals and community groups engage in gardening and with each other, enabling the development of a framework for interaction designers.

I conducted three studies in Brisbane, Australia, two of which focused on established urban agriculture communities: Northey Street City Farm, a city farm north of the city; and Permablitz Brisbane, an event-based grassroots movement. Using ethnographic methods, I engaged in participant observation and conducted interviews to develop a better understanding for interaction designers of the opportunities and challenges faced by members of these two groups. The third study into the practices of residential gardeners involved a human-centred design approach conducting convergent interviews to generate an understanding of the diversity of gardening experiences. The three studies explored different types of urban agriculture, which represent a spectrum of community size and organisation type (individuals, small localised groups, and a community organisation), and a spectrum of garden scale (balcony, backyard, and city farms).

This PhD study contributes to knowledge in three ways: First, each study on its own contributes to a better understanding of the opportunities and contextual constraints that interaction designers must consider when proposing or utilising technological interventions with these communities. Second, the outcomes of the three studies together, contrasted against existing literature, have been utilised to propose a design framework in the form of a pattern language foundation. Finally, I applied the pattern language in the development of a storytelling application, QuickTales, tested with a diverse group of gardeners, provided for reflection and improvement on the pattern language.

The findings of each study highlight several aspects of urban agriculture practice, including: issues of managing resources, be it time or volunteers; the importance and focus on what is local, from community participation in events to sourcing materials and the relevance of information; and, the importance of social connections to sharing experiences about gardening. These are reflected in the eight design patterns that target the social, information and resources aspects of gardening.

Biography

Peter Lyle is a PhD candidate with the Urban Informatics Research Lab, in the School of Design at QUT. His research interests sit at the intersection of computing and social interaction, currently with a focus on food and agriculture. Peter’s PhD study is connected to the ‘Eat, Cook, Grow: Ubiquitous Technology for Sustainable Food Culture Attitudes in the City’ study funded by ARC Linkage. In his PhD study, Peter focuses on supporting HCI practitioners to engage with food growing communities.

Previously, Peter worked in the Tasmanian IT sector from 2003 to 2010. While he initially worked in client support and as a network manager, later Peter transitioned into software development, working on large enterprise projects for both public and private organisations. From this he gained a solid experience base in client interaction, and how to present complex information to people with little technical expertise or knowledge.

Peter also has a long history of close relations with Apple University Consortium. He has been awarded scholarships to attend a number of Apple University Consortium training sessions focusing on software development for Apple technology. Peter has also attended Apple’s premier conference, the WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference), in 2008 and 2011 in San Francisco.

Peter’s initial contact with Apple University Consortium came through a scholarship he was awarded during his Honours studies. His Honours study investigated the design of multi-user cursor-based interaction with large shared displays using smartphones. The study contributed to understanding how information can be displayed across device platforms, and how that information changes over time. In 2010, Peter ran a number of training workshops on iOS development at universities around Australia as part of an AUC road show on mobile computing. He also ran a 3-day iOS training course for high school teachers in Perth in 2011.

Follow Peter on twitter: @peterlyle

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