Urban communities face growing food security challenges due to urbanization, limited land, and low local food production. Urban farming offers a potential solution by utilizing small spaces to grow food, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. However, high entry barriers—such as the need for specialized knowledge and limited support systems—continue to hinder widespread adoption. Although information technology is prevalent in urban areas, there remains a significant gap in digital services that provide comprehensive guidance for urban farming. This study aims to design a mobile application that delivers various services to support urban farming practices.
This study applies a design science research methodology combined with a mixed-methods approach. Twenty interviews were conducted and analyzed thematically, revealing seven key service features. A follow-up survey with 573 valid responses was used to generalize the findings.
Based on these requirements, a digital urban farming service was designed. The research highlights individual and community needs for such services and offers insights to inform application development and efforts to improve food security.
One limitation of this study is the potential imbalance in demographic characteristics among the surveyed participants. Specifically, the sample may be skewed towards urban farmers living in Indonesia's five most populated cities. This imbalance raises concerns about the generalizability of the findings to the broader population. Future research could address this limitation by employing strategies to ensure a more representative sample. Another limitation of this study is that the final work is a high-fidelity prototype rather than a fully implemented system. As a prototype, certain aspects may require further refinement in a real-world implementation. To overcome the limitations inherent in the prototype, future development efforts should focus on implementing the functionalities proposed in this study to realize its intended goal. Furthermore, future research could utilize different methods for building the interface design and comparing it with the design from this study. Despite this limitation, the prototype is a valuable starting point to guide future development toward a more robust and fully functional solution.
This study presents a high-fidelity prototype of a digital urban farming service developed through three design iterations. It integrates tutorials, expert consultations, community forums, grant access, schedule reminders, crop records, and a marketplace to support sustainable urban development.
