Overview

Design to create awareness on the importance of bees and other pollinators & contribute to sustainability of Bees

See Research

See Design

This project explores issues related to sustainability of Bees and other pollinators in our ecosystem. Through our research, we learned that there was a need for intervention aimed towards the general public in terms of both awareness as well as planting flowers for a more bee-friendly environment.

Our proposed design is a public installation to create awareness about the direct relationship between flowerless landscapes, bees and the food we eat which are pollinated by the bees, in order to empathize the user about the declining number of bees and provoke action through the buying of seeds.

Through the combined effect of empathy, education and intervention, we want to create an impact for sensitivity towards bees in the local community and help their survival.

1. Taking notice of the public installation

2. Taping on the screen to see flowers blooming

3. As the flowers are blooming, bees fly out of the flowers

4. The bees fly to the screen of bee comb. The more the flowers the more bees

5. The more the bees, more is the food pollinated by them

6. Users can use this opportunity to buy local bee-friendly seeds

7. Swipe for payment

8. Seed of the chosen bee-friendly flower is dispensed

The major interactions of Bee Better

Methods Used

Project Timeline - Sep to Oct 2018

Team - Ya-Ching, Jayati Dev, Yuhao Shi, Varna Das

Lexie Li

Penny Chiang

Yuhao Shi

Varna Das

How we started

The project was designed as part of class work. Since the theme of the project was preserving life and sustainability, we brainstormed several problem spaces based on sustainability issues, our area of interest and access to information about these spaces. Our initial focus revolved primarily around the symbiotic relationship between humans, animals and other species as well as climate change, biodiversity, and food production. We did two cycles of convergence divergence to explore the possibilities and decide on our direction.

Team brainstorming

The area that was most relevant in the current scenario which has implications in global food security, biodiversity and ecosystem as a whole and given less focus was the Preservation of Pollinators.

Problem Space

How might we help sustain pollination by creating a suitable environment for bees and other pollinators to thrive in?

Bees are the most important pollinators of our fruits, vegetables, flowers, and crops that feed our farm animals. One out of every three bites of food we take is dependent on the services of Bees and other Pollinators. "Bees have been dying over the last 50 years, and we're planting more crops that need them. Bees dying is an indicator of a dysfunctional food system."

Predispositions

Before beginning our research we had some assumptions about the functions of bees and other pollinators. With these assumptions in our mind we proceeded with our primary research on sustainability of pollinators.

Interviews

Interviews gave us not only the clarity in the scope of our design goals but also richer insights into the problem space we were attempting to intervene into.

In order to identify which area we can intervene, we chose qualitative interviews with experts as our research method since bee sustainability and beekeeping was a very specialized field. Since beekeeping was in itself a beautiful, complex art, we decided to keep our questions open-ended and build on the responses from our interview participants. We performed six interviews across the following groups of people -

A researcher involved in bee sustainability

A bee conservationist and educator

An official from The Bee Corp

Two beekeepers -Commercial and Hobbyist

See more details of the interview and observation at Bloomington farmers market

Persona - Christine
Description - A fourth generation commercial beekeeper, her involvement with bees goes back at least a hundred years
Location - Bloomington local farmer’s market

Hives produce more than 500 pounds of honey. Lost 50% of their hives last year.

They could take care of hive-related problems using traditional methods.

Beekeeping is a process learnt through years of experience

Lost 50% of their hives last year.

Reluctant to use technology to take care of bees.

Technology will not add much value to what they already know

"Some of the most important flowers for bees are milkweed, dandelions, clover and thistle flowers. Farmers and gardeners usually pull them out, which leaves bees with lesser number of food sources."

See more details of the interview of Bee conservationist

Persona - Dr. George Hegeman
Description - A biologist and a beekeeping hobbyist, with hives of his own. Also involved at school and university level education program for awareness programs centered around bees.
Location -  Indiana University, Bloomington

Lost about 30% of my beehives in winter.

Bees are transported in trucks long distances for pollination.

People get scared of the swarm of bees and to get in their way.

Beekeeping is an art that needed to be mastered with intuition and experience.

Beekeepers are a very close-knit community, helping each other whenever required.

Federal government support beekeepers in recognition to the importance of bees.

"Have you been to the Wonder lab? They have a beehive with glass walls for kids to see what's going on in the hive. They see what the bees are doing and realize that they're not harmful."

Field Visits

Seeing the real bee hives and bees

The Hilltop garden is a local conservatory maintained by the city and the university. It has a large number of species of flora and fauna as well as a space for beehives. We have done successive visits to the conservatory to learn more about bees, bee-friendly flowers and the ecosystem that the bees thrive in.

We also visited the Bloomington community farmers market where we spoke to commercial beekeepers and other businesses selling seeds of local flowering plants, fruits and vegetables. We observed that the beekeepers sold all kinds of products apart from the obvious honey such as bee wax, bee pollen, propolis etc.

Farmers Market

Bee Friendly Seeds

Bee Hive

Hilltop Garden class room

Design Goals

Since the design space is very broad for the intervention we are trying to develop, we produced a semantic differential to first narrow down on the problem area we were trying to address. We weighed out the possibilities against feasibility and impact, to find where we can create an optimally feasible design that would cause maximum impact. The three areas that fit our design values most optimally were:

Redefined Problem Space

How might we help sustain pollination by empowering people to contribute to creating a suitable environment for bees and other pollinators to thrive in?

Core Concept

More Bee-friendly flowers = More Bees = Functional Food System

The core concept of our design was to help people understand the importance of the services of bees and other pollinators by directly linking them to their dependency on flowering plants as sources of nectar and our food system. Our design consists of

An interactive visual interface that correlates the growth of bee-friendly flowers with an increase in the number of bees and the availability of food in a thought-provoking succession.

A seed dispenser for such flowers that are locally grown, which an individual is able to buy and plant in their living space.

An incentive to support the businesses of beekeepers and local farmers.

Iteration 2

Screen - Food Pollinated by Bees
Interaction - None
Response - As the number of Bees increases, the food increases.

Screen - Buy Seeds
Interaction - Tap
Response - Choose the flowering plant seed and buy it or make donations.

Screen - Buy Seeds
Interaction - Tap
Response - Options to choose the flowering plant seed and buy it or make donations.

Screen - Beehive
Interaction - None
Response - As new flowers are born, the number of bees will increase.