The Technology Garden is a novel interactive environment: a sensor-equipped community garden in a university office building created to invite interaction with both plants and people. Our goals were to promote human-plant interaction; to encourage social interaction in an organization; and to create a pleasing office environment promoting relaxation. Our research explores how technology can encourage relationship building, or the building of a community of interest in a work environment through non-work activity. Distinct from approaches that seek to minimize or remove the need for human intervention by automating plant care, we wish to draw attention to the needs of plants and to encourage human participation.

Charlotte Lee, Eric Kabisch, Silvia Lindtner, Jahmeilah Richardson, M. Six Silberman (cplee -at- ics.uci.edu, {ekabisch, lindtner, jarichar, msilberm} -at -uci.edu)