Overview
The international digital civics exchange brought together students, researchers, and community partners to investigate societal challenges.
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My team focused on why small-scale English farmers resist new agricultural technologies, using provocative design to surface deeper insights. Through rapid research, ideation, and prototyping we created a provotype that helped our sponsors collect richer qualitative responses.
The Problem
Interview transcripts from farmers across Newcastle, Leeds, and Manchester revealed recurring tensions around technology, identity, and trust.
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Deep skepticism toward digital tools
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Preference for traditional, manual farming practices
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Limited trust in unfamiliar technologies
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Resistance tied to identity, autonomy, and heritage
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Research & Insights
Reviewing fieldwork and interview data revealed that resistance is shaped less by ability and more by values.
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Identity over effciency
Resistance to technology is often rooted in heritage, autonomy, and personal farming knowledge.
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Hands-on work matters
Farmers value embodied skill and sensory understanding over tools that feel overly automated.
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Provocation reveals more
Fictional artifacts can surface emotional and cultural reactions that traditional research methods often miss.
Design Process
I moved from transcript synthesis to ideation and finally to a speculative prototype to provoke discussion.
01
Synthesize
Reviewed transcripts, identified themes, and mapped tensions around farming tech.
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Ideate
Brainstormed design directions and narrative concepts.
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Provotype
Refined a final concept into the Landlog Apron, a fictional farming tool.
Final Design
Embedded video or presentation
Final Presentation Video
Along with my 2 other team members, I presented the slide deck (below) as a final deliverable for the Digital Civics Exchange at Northumbria University, Newcastle.