Activities using smart IoT planters in learning spaces: human-centred design of a dashboard

Abstract

Education plays a transversal key role in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals agenda. Educating young people on natural health and the interpretation of scientific evidence can contribute to increased levels of informed social sensitivity towards our natural environment and awareness about its effect on our planet and human wellbeing. To enable experienced-based environmental awareness learning activities, this paper proposes the development of a dashboard that visualizes data captured by sensors located in plants (smart IoT planters) available in learning spaces. The possibilities for learning activities using smart planters can be diverse (plant care, ambient or emotional implications, data analysis, etc.) and its design can influence the shape of desirable dashboard features. This paper offers an answer for such a type of dashboard design based on a human-centred methodology which involves stakeholders (experts and practitioners) in its co-design through guided hands-on workshops. The results show insights related to what are the types of learning activities supported by smart planters that can be especially valuable to educators and what design principles should be considered in the creation of the supporting dashboard. Resulting representative proposals for activities include plant monitoring, correlation of sensed data and observations, and collaborative tasks. Key values perceived by participants include expected high levels of students' engagement, critical thinking and familiarity with the scientific method. Design principles for a supporting dashboard include the use of a traffic light metaphor or enabling data collection that could serve for contrasting variables and observations at a moment in time and across time. The paper illustrates how the results achieved can lead to the design of a human-centred dashboard for situated environmental awareness education.