Publics, Place, and Sensors: Co-Designing Environmental Monitoring with a Community Orchard

Paper Title

Publics, Place, and Sensors: Co-Designing Environmental Monitoring with a Community Orchard

Publication Info

• Topic area: Participatory design of environmental sensor networks for urban agricultural settings.
• Keywords: participatory design, environmental sensing, community orchards, urban agriculture, heat resilience, data-in-place, civic engagement, storytelling, community-based organizations, sustainable HCI.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Top-down environmental sensor deployments often fail to align with community needs, producing data that lacks local relevance and meaning. Urban agricultural sites, such as community orchards, are underexplored as contexts for environmental sensing, despite their potential for heat mitigation and environmental stewardship.
• Significance: Community orchards play a vital role in urban heat resilience and environmental care. Designing sensor networks that integrate local knowledge and stewardship practices can enhance their effectiveness and relevance.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research in HCI and Digital Agriculture has emphasized the importance of participatory approaches to align sensing technologies with local practices and values. However, little work has focused on urban agricultural settings like community orchards, leaving a gap in understanding how these technologies can support collective care and place-based knowledge.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A participatory design (PD) study to co-develop a high-density environmental sensor network with volunteers at a community orchard, integrating local knowledge and stewardship practices into the design process.
• Novelty:
  1. Detailed case study of participatory design with a community orchard, a previously underexplored site for environmental sensing.
  2. Demonstration of how PD workshops can surface shared concerns, support mutual learning, and integrate environmental data into place-based practices.
  3. Proposal of design criteria for community-driven sensor networks emphasizing storytelling, data management, learning, and capacity building.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted two participatory design workshops with orchard volunteers.
  • Workshop 1: Surfaced community needs, mapped environmental challenges, and identified monitoring goals.
  • Workshop 2: Validated findings, refined sensor locations, and finalized design priorities.
  • Used storytelling, mapping, and collaborative decision-making to align sensing priorities with community concerns.
  • Installed sensors based on workshop outputs and developed real-time data visualizations for ongoing use.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Final sensor configuration included soil moisture, air temperature, and relative humidity sensors, prioritized for areas with historical issues like tree death, puddling, and fungal disease.
  • Real-time data visualizations were developed to support stewardship and community engagement.
• Advantage over baselines: The participatory approach ensured that the sensor network addressed specific community concerns, such as plant health and microclimate variations, rather than imposing abstract technical solutions.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Workshops engaged 7–8 participants, including orchard leaders and volunteers.
  • Data analysis included clustering workshop outputs into themes and aligning sensing priorities with lived experiences.
  • Sensors were installed in April 2024, with ongoing evaluation of their utility for orchard management.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited participation from newer volunteers and casual visitors.
  • Sensor hardware was pre-selected, restricting co-design scope.
  • Future work will evaluate how the sensor network supports long-term stewardship and data interpretation.

Summary

This study explored participatory design of an environmental sensor network with a volunteer-run community orchard to support urban heat resilience and stewardship practices. Through two workshops, participants identified monitoring goals, refined sensor placements, and integrated sensing technologies into their place-based practices. The final sensor network addressed specific environmental concerns, such as tree health and water management, and included real-time data visualizations for ongoing use. This work contributes to HCI by demonstrating how participatory design can align sensing systems with community values, offering insights for future deployments in urban agriculture and community-based organizations.