VriX: An Exploratory Journey in Designing Intelligent Food Forestry Software
Company
THAT Labs
UX/UI Explorations/Ideations
UX Researcher, Permaculture expert/ Architect
The exploratory design question was: How might we build an integrated digital workspace that respects the complexity of natural ecosystems while making Food Forestry planning accessible and actionable?
Phase 1: First Hypotheses & The V0.1 Modules
Deconstructing the food forest lifecycle into three core features.
The initial ideation sprint framed the workflow into three sequential tools intended to take a grower from raw land to a living guild:
The Land Planner: A spatial onboarding module to split parcels into hardscaping, softscaping, and ground cover zones based on input acreage.
The Guild Maker: A drag-and-drop tool where designers select a central canopy tree from a regional library and manually pick companion understory plants.
The AI Guild Generator: A proposed one-click solution where entering a project's intent (e.g., "High-Yield Citrus Guild") would automatically generate a completed plant layout.
Phase 2: Testing, Friction & The Reality Check
Usability walkthroughs revealed where our assumptions broke down.
We conducted structured user flow testing with practicing permaculture architects and experts using initial desktop prototypes. The feedback immediately challenged several early assumptions:
The initial one-click AI generator created an automated, finished guild that users found unusable. As noted in testing sessions: "This kind of AI does not make sense, as it does not have the option for the user to edit and mix-and-match with the plant species".
Permaculture is contextual; no algorithm can account for microclimatic anomalies without designer intervention. We pivoted from an automated "generator" toward an interactive contextual co-pilot that surfaces triggers—such as suggesting water-loving accumulator plants only when a user draws a guild adjacent to a swale.
Testing highlighted that asking users to type in acreage and choose dropdown regions was disconnected from real-world site analysis. Expert designers required:
Direct integration of geospatial files (KML uploads or Google Earth polygon integration).
Sector Analysis Overlays: Accounting for external forces including sun and wind paths, vehicular noise buffers, human/wildlife corridors, and wildfire vectors.
Empirical soil data entry (uploading lab soil health tests covering pH, moisture capacity, and NPK values).
Phase 3: Field Grounding & The Cultural Ethos
Stepping away from screens to listen to the soil in Sasan Gir.
To prevent the software from becoming an insulated tech concept, we conducted fieldwork in Sasan Gir, studying how land stewards, traditional knowledge keepers (Tarun Bhai), and farm managers (Maulik Bhagat) communicate ecological relationships on degraded dry-deciduous ground.
This highlighted a fundamental product challenge: How do we bridge the gap between high-level architectural planning on desktop and intuitive, dirty-hands execution in the field?
This insight prompted an exploration of dual modalities:
A Desktop Planning Suite: Built for designers managing complex spatial geometry, CAD overlays, and ecosystem balancing.
A Tactile Mobile Companion: Built for caretakers, volunteers, and hobby growers needing bite-sized guidance, quick plant lookups, and visual maintenance schedules.
Phase 4: Re-iterations & Ideation Experiments
Re-imagining interactions: from spreadsheets to biophilic play.
With the core architecture refined, the design process expanded into multiple parallel explorations across interaction models, visual styling, and behavioral psychology.
1. "Plant Saathi" & Companion Matchmaking
To make companion planting intuitive without dumbing down the biology, we experimented with familiar interaction models borrowed from consumer apps:
Instead of dense scientific tables, we introduced a card-swiping companion interface ("Seema Aunty for plants").
If a Peepal tree needs nitrogen fixing and shade, swiping displays complementary plants (like Neem). A successful match displays mutual benefits ("Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi"), while incompatible pairings trigger allelopathic warnings ("It's not you, it's me").
2. Tactile Touch & The ABC Behavioral Model
Standard mobile interfaces prioritize passive scrolling. We explored whether on-screen gestures could echo tactile farming motions using the Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence (ABC) model:
Kneading/Scratching gestures to clear canvases or shuffle plant palettes.
Two-finger clustering/pinching to group companion plants into cohesive guilds.
Direct drag-and-drop to plant seeds and root nodes into spatial soil beds.
Named after the Sanskrit Vriksha (tree) with a modern technological sensibility, VriX was synthesized as a proposed ecosystem proposal connecting three core user groups:
Core Structural Workflows Proposed:
Initial version of mobile application
Automation must assist, not dictate: In ecological design, practitioners prioritize context, nuance, and field wisdom over algorithmic speed. Software in this domain must be co-creative rather than prescriptive.
Closing the loop is essential: A landscape plan is only an intention; real resilience happens through seasonal pruning, watering, and soil care. Connecting the master desktop canvas directly to daily field chores turned the concept from a theoretical diagram into a practical management framework.