Project Overview

This project focuses on optimizing and innovating traditional agricultural industries under China's rural revitalization policy trends. The pilot was conducted in a tea industry park in Guangdong Province, China. The project primarily aimed at empowering knowledgeable and culturally-aware entrepreneurial youth with digital management, marketing, and customer engagement, building on traditional tea planting and garden management.

Design Process

The project framework, which followed the Double Diamond model from design thinking, aided me in my research, analysis, and later stages of output, testing, and iteration. Initially, a broad background investigation established a foundation, leading me to conduct a field study in a tea industry park in Guangdong Province. During the visit, I engaged in small tea talks and conducted multiple rounds of interviews with various stakeholders in the tea industry, which helped in developing user personas and a stakeholder map.

Subsequently, as a key phase of the project, we invited these stakeholders to participate in a co-design workshop. Through the carefully structured stages of the workshop I designed, we eventually established a new type of tea garden, centered around intelligent products and a smart platform, within the Internet of Things framework. This led to the creation of an integrated digital marketing system combined with smart management of tea gardens, resulting in a novel digital ecosystem for tea plantation management and marketing. This system included hardware product designs, internet product designs, and the overall operational chain. Finally, the project was comprehensively presented through user stories and a service blueprint.