Problem
Growing value-added plants like tomatoes, chillies etc.. indoors requires significant knowledge of the growth, intensive human attention & effort for maintenance. Exact requirements of water & nutrients for plant growth is not known during the lifecycle of the crop. Portability is a major constraint in the indoor gardening system and most system occupies considerable space.
User
Indoor practitioners who are ambiguous about plant nutrition feed and working city occupants who travel frequently.
My Role
This project was to design the final product concept to be showcased to the investors additional to a prototype. Before the design of the prototype, I was to design the concept design that is aesthetically pleasing inside a home and also portable.
Design Process
The shape and structure of the device were to be decided first to make it look good as well as accommodate the maximum number of seed pods. The maximum perimeter and the height were fixed to ensure the size constraint. Various symmetric shapes such as hexagon, round and square were tried out and found that circular cross-section would be more suitable to enable the optimum spacing between the pods. The device’s longitudinal section was inspired by the shape of a pebble as suggested by the team. The topology of pods was the next step where we tried out various arrangements including star, circular, hexagonal etc.