SCC-PG: Understanding the Technical and Social Challenges and Opportunities of Physically and Digitally Augmented Community Gardens

这个NSF智能和连接社区（S&amp；CC）规划拨款将探索“元花园”的概念，这是一个物理和数字增强的社区花园，旨在解决与传统社区花园相关的挑战。社区花园有潜力提供许多好处，但往往面临诸如资源稀缺、访问受限、缺乏持久参与和其他挑战等限制。本研究的意义在于，它有可能无缝连接实体和虚拟社区花园，并通过克服空间和资源限制来提升它们的体验和价值。将物理花园扩展为虚拟花园可能会克服空间和资源的限制。虚拟花园还可以提供新的、吸引人的平台，使人们能够联系、分享、学习，甚至创造收入。能够通过虚拟平台远程监控和管理物理花园，还可以为那些有压力完成其他时间要求高的任务或在极端事件（如流行病导致的封锁）期间的居民提供更大的调度灵活性。这种创新的方法通过解决传统社区花园面临的挑战，并在社区学习、参与和福祉方面扩大其潜力，从而造福社会。本研究旨在通过参与式设计研讨会确定元花园的设计机会和潜在的社会效益，制定技术策略，并为社区花园的物理和虚拟增强创建功能原型。此外，它的目标是与社区伙伴进行试点测试，并总结设计准则，以供今后实施。在技术方面，研究包括绘制相关功能特性、制定技术开发策略、开发初步功能原型和评估系统性能。这些过程由针对技术方面的具体研究问题提供信息，如关键技术特征、增强方法、技术差距、挑战和潜在解决方案。从社会角度来看，本研究采用了参与式设计工作坊、半结构化访谈和反思性主题分析的研究贯穿设计的方法。这些方法是由探索元花园概念的社会效益和挑战以及它如何增强社区体验的问题所指导的。总的来说，这些努力旨在探索元花园如何在规划拨款的推动下，重新定义社区花园，使其更具包容性、可访问性和影响力。这些混合现实花园的潜力甚至可能超出社区花园的范围，有可能加强农业管理、环境质量监测、城乡规划等。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This NSF Smart and Connected Community (S&CC) planning grant will explore the concept of the "meta-garden", which is a physically and digitally augmented community garden aimed at addressing challenges associated with traditional community gardens. Community gardens have the potential to provide numerous benefits, but often face limitations such as scarce resources, limited access, lack of persistent engagement, and other challenges. The significance of this research lies in its potential to seamlessly connect physical and virtual community gardens, and enhance their experiences and values by overcoming spatial and resource limitations. Extending a physical garden into a virtual one could potentially overcome space and resource limitations. Virtual gardens may also provide new and engaging platforms to enable people to connect, share, learn, and even generate revenue. Being able to remotely monitor and manage physical gardens via a virtual platform may also provide more scheduling flexibility for residents who are pressured to fulfill other time-demanding duties, or during extreme events such as lockdowns due to pandemics. This innovative approach benefits society by addressing challenges facing traditional community gardens and expanding their potential in terms of community learning, engagement, and well-being.The research endeavors to identify design opportunities and potential social benefits of the meta-garden through participatory design workshops, develop a technical strategy, and create functional prototypes for physical and virtual augmentations of a community garden. Moreover, it aims to conduct pilot tests with community partners and summarize design guidelines for future implementation. On the technical front, the research involves mapping out relevant functional features, formulating technical development strategies, developing preliminary functional prototypes, and evaluating system performance. These processes are informed by specific research questions targeting technical aspects such as key technical features, approaches for augmentation, technical gaps, challenges, and potential solutions. From a social perspective, the research employs a research-through-design approach involving participatory design workshops, semi-structured interviews, and reflective thematic analysis. These methods are guided by questions that explore the social benefits and challenges of the meta-garden concept and how it can enhance community experiences. Collectively, these endeavors serve to explore how meta-gardens, facilitated by this planning grant, could redefine community gardens to be more inclusive, accessible, and impactful. The potential for these mixed-reality gardens may even stretch beyond the community garden context, with possibilities for enhancing agricultural management, environmental quality monitoring, urban and rural planning, and more.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.