Design Systems Project
This was a project that I built based on person to person community connection and the natural human desire to forage. This was my semester long project and assignment for my graduate design systems course.
Person-to-Person
Finding comfort in music and plants
During the pandemic there has been an uptick of Clinton Hill community interest in jazz, classical music, and gardening. This neighborhood has always been community minded before the pandemic, during, and hopefully post-pandemic. There are several live music events and weekend gardening groups to join. Based on my attendance to both of these, there seems to be a lot of crossover participants. Mostly the Clinton Hill Brooklyn Library facilitates a lot of these events, but there is also a Fort Greene committee that gets together and learns the ins and outs of gardening and landscaping. On a wider scale, the "cottagecore" lifestyle became appealing during the thick of the pandemic for many people dwelling in cities. This need to get back to nature drove many people out of the city in search of the natural. Renaissances of music, art, and pastoral ideations have been historically tied to periods of upheaval and change. This pandemic propelled people into that state of change and left them reaching for comfort, community, and enrichment.
Why Does This Matter?
In the time of initial isolation, two things personally made me happy: tending to my small collection of indoor plants and listening to calming music. Finding community connections and helping one another through sharing music, plants, and a love of exploring is important. It helps keep us connected and sane during a time of separation.
Who Does This Help?
This helps everyone who has an interest in music, plants, and exploring. This helps this community and other communities hopefully stay connected in their hobbies and explore their communities. In 2025, I think that this will still be dealing with remnants of the pandemic at that point, so having a way to connect, explore, and forage will continue to be important.
How Does This Work?
Forage is a map, music, and photography based app that lets the user travel across the city to see and listen to different plants, trees, and flowers. Using geotags and phone location services, as soon as a user gets within 20 feet of a marked plant or former plant, the associated picture will pop up and the corresponding song will be able to be played. The user also has to option to take a picture of the plant. After the user has collected a plant, the sound associated will be added to an in-app playlist that gathers all of the foraged sounds.
