Design Project 2 | Project Plan

Action items

Sam - additional produce, speaker, slides, bank of talking points

Maddie - bringing table cloth, lavendar, plant, email jessica about samples, slides, fruit bowl/basket/crate for samples

Ishrita - 2 week calendar (color coded), flyers, picture frame (print out photo of the farm)

Prepping for the final product

• Analoge sign up sheet
• analoge posters (informations/adverstising
• set up
• mason jars
• plants
• crate
• chalk board
• chalk
• clipboard

Final Presentation

• Design process
• Pitch
• in person set up
• quick renactment
• samples for everyone
• Self-Reflection

Post Farm Tour Notes

• moving forward with the Farm stand — what is our MVP?
• Essential features
• A physical stand that engages students
• Tastings and giveaways of products from the farm including fruits, vegetables, and wildflowers
• Including more “unique” products to taste (i.e one of the farms 30+ citruses like the “lemonade” lemon, edible flower, nature’s caviar, etc) if possible
• A combination of physically presented (poster) and orally presented background info on the farm, such as info on its location, open hours, products, farming practices and more, hammering home that the space is accessible to EVERYONE
• A physical marketing chalkboard/whiteboard/poster with info about upcoming events and open opportunities at the farm (And a QR code to join mailing list)
• Non-essential features
• Linking tastings/pop-up themes to what is happening on the farm (i.e., citrus varieties, berry sampling, “agricultural forestry”)
• Music playing at the stand
• Stand is build from wooden food pallets and intentionally has a “farmy” aesthetic
• Stand is designed to be delightful and charming — free serotonin for students
• Bouquet making
• Possibly a survey about how much students know about the farm/how much they have interacted with it (Questions like “how many times have you been to the Stanford farm, If you have attended, what types of events have you attended?, etc)

Meeting w Jessica Notes

• 3 full time staff
• patrick = farmer and lecturer
• jessica works on administrative stuff
• communications
• building programs
• wednesday evening programming throughout the year
• surroudning agriculture EJ etc
• hands on learning
• cooking, planting, volunteering
• farmers lead volunteering
• in charge of events and classes and programming
• certification as well
• ebbs and flows. . . fall and spring busiest times
• less program planning and more hands on teaching
• 15ish students
• farm vision
• young program - 10 years
• long and short of
• hands on learning opportunities = top priority
• outside community programming as well
• providing resources for folks outside of stanford beneficial to both students and the communty
• wants to strenghten
• speakers demos etc
• stewardship of land . . . but more than that
• opportunities, wellness center, providing programs
• gap between dining med school and food/agriculture
• moving more in that direction
• immediate goal!
• classes workshops speaker seiries
• lack of communicaiton, compartmentalized
• lots of commradery, but could be more cohesion
• sharing network . . . needing more staffing and budget
• building capacity so that they can help students realize vision
• at the very least talking to other departments and sharing other resources
• building staffing visions

What is the ideal relationship between the farm and students?

• biggest engagement with classes
• dont host a lot of research:( wants to be a place for reserch
• wants to see more interaction
• also see lots of students w volunteers
• students wanting to host events
• only have wednesdays open right now
• there is a lot of interest
• materials for textiles, art, etc
• wants to offer more programming
• Spring is completely booked except for Fridays

How might the average student interact w the farm

• extending reach . . . problem is that jessica does not have the capacity to reach
• has to decline opportunities because of the maintenace it requires
• cant always capture all of that energy
• not a whole lot of interface w dining
• we sell back to dining
• all that really happens is that the dishes are labled if they include produce from the farm
• farm sells flowers!
• sust events buy farm flowers
• dont have branding on the flowers so they dont know that they come from the farm
• simple way to learn about the farm
• “website sucks”

What happens to the stuff that is grown to the farm?

• quite a bit of waste
• make their own compost (”unofficial”. . . difficult to make)
• produce goes out whole
• lots gets chopped into till
• working w sust office to manage waste (sorting, messaging etc)
• squirrels eat things but then just goes into ground

Relationship w Doerr school/RDE?

• farm is part of the doerr school
• deans office. . . not a department which is weird bc farm is so student facing
• for a long time communicaiton was incredibly difficult bc deans office wanted to monitor and clear everything
• stanford protective of image
• whole process w staming
• CCOF
• organically certified
• lots of guidelines to follow
• conversations about how to put name out there
• what if students do it?
• in process of getting name back on boxes and produce
• want to get social media !!
• possibility to expand communication
• changes in the works
• communications fellowship (not very successful)
• yearlong program, 2 fellows dropped out
• created plans, ran newsletter
• want to bring that back
• use the farm as an event space
• thousands of Dollars to just get the rights to a film to play a movie, have to contact them, etc
• charge for events, if they are not renting it out, they are losing that money on top of spending the money to play the documentary, etc
• issues go back to staffing capacity
• any ways in which the farm could expose itself more physically on campus? farm stand?
• have team building programs, one of which is a culinary related one, cook w/ the food grown at the farm
• bouquet arranging, make bouquets with the farm flowers
• part of the charm is coming to us BUT could take what they are doing and meet people halfway (people have requested the farm to bring bouquet making in their offices/buildings on campus)
• DID do the farmers market, for like a year, but were not selling a lot, and did not want to undercut the farmers selling there, also undergrads don't really need to buy produce (meal plans), and were reaching the same people every time (not reaching new audience)
• Doerr School will have a market inside of it (in the works)
• Trying to have a stand in Y2E2 selling, Stanford said no because it is a nonprofit status, so then asked for donations, that got it completely shut down
• Could do the food sampling thing—but likely someone will call it “not food safe” or complain
• According to policy—CAN give out food for free and CAN ask for donations (as long as there is no direct exchange)
• Could you set up a stand near Coupa/Meyer Green (busy place) rather than Doerr School or Y2E2?
• Making feel happier is worth it alone, especially with such a stressful work environment on campus
• Don't think a lot of people understand from the administrative side what the farm does
• Ex: have a purchasing credit card, asks for seeds “do you pay tax on seeds” (you are not supposed to for seeds), and Stanford got mad that they don't pay taxes—-Stanford does not understand the rules
• Farm stand is doable, have to do some of the background work

In class 2/20

Updated Interview Questions

• Introduction: Why are we here?
• Sustainability design thinking class, want to engage in design process with sustainbility on campus. want to understand
• Mention Colin
• Tell us about your role on the farm and the day-day funciton here! Let Jessica shine
• Tell us about the challenges you currently face on the Farm in your day-day. What do you wish could be different?
• Are they more programming oriented? Facilities oriented?
• What are the constraints of the problem?
• What do you wish you had a solution for? How do you want students to get involved?
• Student Engagement: who, how, and why?
• How do students find out about the farm? If you had more students what would they do?
• Collaborations/Cross-campus relations
• What is your relationship between other organizations/entities on campus (i.e., the Doerr School of Sustainability)? How do you interact/collaborate?
• Have these collaborations been generative and successful?
• Is there a desire for furthered collaboration?
• How do you imagine the relationship between the farm and the campus could be?
• Doerr School: workshops, classes, events?
• What is the Farm's relationship with R&DE/Dining Halls?
• Waste/Harvest Surplus
• How much food is unused? What happens to it?
• Are there particular products that there are surpluses for?

Pre-Interview Product Idea/Need Anticipation

• student engagement- farm stand near meyer green/center of campus
• expanding Farm - other locations on campus, building out current facilites
• distribution of produce - what happens to it?
• food, flowers, etc.
• is there extras/something that needs to be distributed?

Updated Project Timeline

In-Class 2/15

What are our initial ideas?

• Maddie: designing additional spaces/garden beds/opportunities to activate space to boost engagement (for both Stanford and neighboring communities)
• Sam: building the brand of the Farm, increasing engagement/presence on campus
• dinging hall - dorm - farm relationship?
• Ishrita: increase classes, weekend-long programs, certificate program, sustainability/food, mini program, linking engagement to other sustainability groups/programs on campus

How do we get people to the Farm?

• Documentary event
• linking education, screening, food
• bridging the media to the farm
• pizza nights
• farm stand - bringing the farm to students
• free samples and sign ups
• collaborations between Wellness coaches and the Farm
• emphasizing the conneciton between wellness and food and agriculture

Initial Project Plan

• Meet w/ Jessica
• Schedule tour
• Potential questions for meeting(s) (Remember who when where why)
• What are some of the main Farm programs that you run?
• Who is engaged? Who do you work with on a daily basis?
• How has engagement changed over time?
• Has the role of the Farm changed over time?
• What is the Farm’s vision or long-term goals?
• What are the shorter-term goals for the Farm?
• What is your relationship between other organizations/entities on campus (i.e., the Doerr School of Sustainability)? How do you interact/collaborate?
• Have these collaborations been generative and successful?
• Is there a desire for furthered collaboration?
• How do you imagine the relationship between the farm and the campus could be?
• Tell us about the challenges you currently face on the Farm in your day-day. What do you wish could be different?
• Are they more programming oriented? Facilities oriented?
• What are the constraints of the problem?
• How does the Farm interface with the average Stanford student?
• What is the Farm's relationship with R&DE/Dining Halls?
• Does the farm ever have surplus or waste crops that have been harvested such as flowers?

Goals

• be a hub for connection for building community
• community hub for on and off campus
• bringing together research, food, dining, and human health
• bridging residential dining, the med school, and the farm
• whether in workshops, classes, or just staffing relationships

Problems

• Right hand is not talking to the left hand
• Could be more cohesion on campus
• Want to bring people together more
• Don’t have enough staff, not enough hands
• Extending reach
• Jessica does all of the farm’s marketing, and she’s just one person
• She will often decline opportunities to put more energy into promoting the farm out of fear that there will be too much interest generated that can’t be met

To-do

• Building a business plan
• Where, when, University policies, who’s going to do it