Interfaces of the Agriculture 4.0

Letizia Bollini

, Alessio Caccamo

and Carlo Martino

Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, Milan, Italy

Department of Planning, Design, Technology of Architecture, Sapienza University of Rome, Via Flaminia 72, Rome, Italy

Keywords: Agriculture 4.0, Agritech and Design, Human-Decentered Design, Conversational Interfaces, Multimodal

User Interfaces.

Abstract: The introduction of information technologies in the environmental field is impacting and changing even a

traditional sector like agriculture. Nevertheless, Agriculture 4.0 and data-driven decisions should meet user

needs and expectations. The paper presents a broad theoretical overview, discussing both the strategic role of

design applied to Agri-tech and the issue of User Interface and Interaction as enabling tools in the field. In

particular, the paper suggests to rethink the HCD approach, moving on a Human-Decentered Design approach

that put together user-technology-environment and the importance of the role of calm technologies as a way

to place the farmer, not as a final target and passive spectator, but as an active part of the process to aim the

process of mitigation, appropriation from a traditional cultivation method to the 4.0 one.

1 INTRODUCTION

Today, we live in an immaterial society, based on the

so-called fifth dimension (Cosenza, 2012), an

information dimension in which knowledge passes

through the analysis and communication of data: the

pervasive information society (Resmini, Rosati,

2011), or Society 4.0. Today more than ever, contexts

of use and digital technologies should be investigated

in order to understand the perspective of the future

world.

Historically influenced by HCI, Computer

Science and cognitive ergonomics (Drucker, 2014),

the interface design takes today’s cultural

connotations and socio-political influences to

question not only on the functional aspect, but the

communicative and expressive, aesthetic and

educational. Borrowing the term from the theatre, the

novelty of the new interfaces is the ability to break the

fourth wall, since they go beyond the screen (Kortum,

2007) and, far from being just and exclusively

invisible windows of connection between the data and

the user, are today more than ever a pervasive reality

that - from the screen to the AR - take on the

characteristics of the new media. The interface leaves

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6491-4838

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2045-6385

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0664-0549

the frame of monitors, moving into the world

becoming a structure that is architecturally grafted

onto existing reality. Going beyond the interface as a

tool for help and support - seeing it instead as a

partner with whom to live - means affirming the

pervasiveness of the same and its repercussions in its

social, political, cultural and therefore educational

aspects.

Today, the interface effectively becomes a hybrid

environment between the physical and virtual. A

mixed reality that assumes architectural features and

spatial qualities. For this reason, the future of the

interface requires investigation to understand what

we should borrow from the design physical spaces to

create mixed ones, in terms of methods and

approaches. Starting from this theoretical framework,

the paper presents a broad theoretical overview – part

of an on-going research - discussing both the strategic

role of design applied to Agriculture 4.0 and the User

Interface and Interaction as enabling tools in the field.

Paragraph 2 presents the shifting role of Design in

the field of Agriculture, from product to service,

suggesting the cultural approach that design could

give in the transmission of knowledge in the

agricultural and ethno-botanical fields.

Bollini, L., Caccamo, A. and Martino, C.

Interfaces of the Agriculture 4.0.

DOI: 10.5220/0008164802730280

In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST 2019), pages 273-280

ISBN: 978-989-758-386-5

273

Paragraph 3 explores, firstly, the definition and

the possible skills of the farmer of the future,

secondly, the importance of calm technologies as a

mediated tool to aid the passage from traditional

cultivation method to the 4.0 one.

Paragraph 4 suggests a new approach to the

interaction design project that from a human centered

point of view, shifts to a human de-centered one,

involving the environment. At the end, an

international case study shows one of the possible

applications of non-traditional interface in home-

made farming.

2 DESIGN- INNOVATION-

AGRICULTURE 4.0

Until the late 70s, in the mechanization age, the

contribution of Design for Agriculture was limited to

the design of material artefacts, tools and means for

working in the field or, at the end of the chain, in the

arena of corporate graphics, the branch that studies

and create the packaging for agricultural products or

to the visual communication of agribusiness brands.

Excluding intensive, extensive and advanced

cultivations in the USA, in the rest of the world

cultivation processes were the prerogative of

agricultural traditions reiterated through the

generational transfer of knowledge (Ison and Russell,

2000). In the most advanced cases, they were

integrated by the consultancy of technical-scientific

figures, agronomists, well trained on the so-called

hard sciences – chemistry, botany, biology – but

poorly trained on the entrepreneurial and managerial

aspects of agricultural production on an industrial

scale. Technological innovation applied to artefacts

for agriculture – as the central theme on which design

was focused for a long time – has always been

pursued to free mankind from physical fatigue

(Maldonado, 1987; Boni, 2014) and to increase the

productivity of cultivation processes.

The digital revolution and the innovations

developed over the last 30 years within Computer

Science, Robotics and AI, applied to agriculture first

with precision farming (Auernhammer, 2001) and

then with [...] “the transposition of the paradigm of

Industry 4.0 in the agricultural sector, that is the

tendency towards automation and the

interconnection of agricultural activities and all

supply chain processes [...]“ (Osservatorio

SmartAgrifood, 2018). This paradigm today defines

Agriculture 4.0 or digital farming, and it has opened

up new problems and new areas of experimentation

to which Design, as a “plastic” discipline, is called to

give answers.

In the 90s, we witness the first forms of

technology and process innovation in Agriculture,

thanks to the development of Precision Agriculture

(Auernhammer, 2001). Today, these innovation - as a

result of Agriculture 4.0 - extends to the monitoring

of crops, to the traceability of the entire supply chain,

up to the Supply Chain. The introduction of

technological elements - on one hand has clear and

noble goals - on the other brings out new and more

complex problems. In fact, if this application

responds to a growing demand for “food” connected

to the increase in the world population or seeks new

solutions to adapt the cultivation processes to climate

change (Howden, SM et al, 2007), it also raises

questions related to the dissemination and integration

of the same in the traditional cultivation processes as

well as open a debate about the role that the farmer

has and will have to have in hybridised contexts. The

farmer could, in fact, evolve into a professional

agronomist / farmer with digital knowledge and skills

– digital farmer – with a wealth of expertise resulting

from the combination of ICT and agronomic skills,

expressly dedicated to the implementation of the so-

called Smart & Precision agriculture and automation

processes. Design can continue to contribute to the

production of artefacts for cultivation processes, even

in an “increased” performance logic deriving from

ergonomic innovations or from the integration of new

technologies – Smart Farming – the relationship

between Design and Agriculture 4.0 shifts the

application centre of gravity, investing in mainly

intangible areas, ranging from the transfer of

Intelligent Environments to the agricultural

environment, to the design of the “services” defined

by new processes, to the definition of new Users, and

to the design of functional interfaces in a HCD

approach, useful for the management of new systems

and new technological devices. In the scenario of

Agriculture 4.0 the spaces for Design-Driven

Innovation (Verganti, 2009) seem to be unlimited and

on very different scales. In fact, they can be

approached according to the logic of Strategic

Design, Social Innovation, Systemic Design or

according to the Human Centred Design modality.

The research that our team is carrying out is part of

the latter, positioning it in a scenario that strongly

integrates scientific research in the context of the IoT,

the UX and the UI design.

Design-driven innovation in agriculture can now,

focus on the relationship between new devices and

their usability, for the construction of interfaces

capable of facilitating the use of the former ones by

WEBIST 2019 - 15th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

274

more advanced farmers, characterized by a different

technological and cultural imagination.

The challenge for the new interfaces that go

beyond the screen to reach the environment –

becoming pervasive – seems to be the translation of

the different ethno-botany – as stated by Treccani

Encyclopaedia - into an interface that becomes a

medium of agri-culture – in the meaning of culture of

cultivation – according to a logic of customization

that can lead to an empathic and natural fruition,

which does not deny it flattens as it settles in previous

peasant cultures. Added to this point, there is the need

for dynamic-responsive, customizable and

interoperable tools – able not just to “make people

read” and/or transmit information but also to suggest

actions and solutions to be adopted in a DSS logic –

Decision Support Systems – or “machine learning”.

3 CALM TECHNOLOGIES FOR

SMART FARMERS IN

HYPER-LOCAL

PRODUCTIONS

As stated by Nielsen back in 2004, internet and digital

technologies are undoing the industrial revolution

balancing a mass and centralized vision of the

production, media and social organization with a

more holistic eco-systemic and dispersed life-way

(Nielsen, 2004). Moreover, the dramatic ecological

crisis and climate changes we are facing are a vast and

compelling motivation to rethink our economic

model. We can define it as a sort of digital eco-nomic

paradigm that claims a social innovation move from

an XVII-XX century way of life to a post-industrial,

post-modern post-capitalist era in which the

development of technology is no more a promise of

infinite growth, but rather a commodity to improve a

decentralized individual and collective lifestyle.

Something in between the décroissance sereine

theorized by Latouche (2004, 2007) ad a glocal

approach to a sustainable and ecological transition of

the post society (Klein, 2014).

The new organizational paradigms that, at times,

seem to emerge, develop according to centrifugal and

contrasting tendencies. In some cases we can see the

concentration of large parts of the production and

distribution systems centralized in a few hands, as is

happening in Silicon Valley with the Gang of four as

Gallow (2015) defined them and where some players,

instead of dis-intermediating people’s access to

information and resources have simply replaced the

old intermediaries (as in the case of Amazon, even in

the food distribution sector) (Bauman, 2013). Beside

these realities, however, root-grass phenomena and

bottom-up economies, fragmented, local have been

developing according to the model of the long tail

theorized by Anderson (2006) in the world of media,

music, books, contents, and integrated platforms

Amazon and iTunes in primis.

In this scenario, even a traditional production

sectors such as agriculture is invested by

technological innovation at a different scale. On the

one hand, there are big business players able to

introduce and adopt a vast range of technological

devices and systems. It is the field of agritech and

smart-farming where drones, Artificial Intelligence,

machine learning, automation, sensors, IoT, and other

data-driven and science-driven information

technologies are applied to farming and agriculture.

However, this cultural shifting also allows small

realities, to adopt a smart approach with a high level

of IT and added-value innovation to sustainable

micro-cultures or local experiences to improve

harvesting and food productions (Bollini & Cerletti,

2009). It is the case of the MIT Media Lab project

headed by Caleb Harper: The open agriculture

initiative intended to offer a digital framework, an

open and accessible ecosystem that is raising and

growing a community of nerdfarmers and aims to

“builds open resources to enable a global community

to accelerate digital agricultural innovation […] that

enable and promote transparency, networked

experimentation, education, and hyper-local

production […] creating collaborative tools and

communities to explore future agricultural systems”

(OpenAg, 2015).

Nevertheless, the transformation between a global

and industrial approach to a local and digital

dimension implies further cultural changes. The

passage of scale from large estate-owned productions

to the possibility of self-production involves two

fundamental factors in the relationship with applied

technologies: the territory and the people. It questions

the ancestral value of this relationship. The tech

infrastructure, in fact, overlays on the spatial surface,

both physically and metaphorically, as a sort of

second overlapping eco-system (Bollini, 2016). At

the same time, it should be able to create an accessible

interface for people interacting with sensors, data, and

environment in an engaging and friendly way. The

technologies, in this case, are enabling tools in

automating natural processes and supporting what

could be defined as user-generated products, where

the products are harvests of agricultural crops at local

or hyperlocal scale and self-production of food.

Interfaces of the Agriculture 4.0

275

But who are the new farmers? Are they real

technology “geeks” and nerds well trained and skilled

in Computer Science? Or only people with a strong

concern for sustainability and affordable living

willing to respect the environment and to embrace the

de-growth or a different growth culture? Or, again,

small entrepreneurs willing to change the

relationships of production and distribution reducing

the production chain and using eco-compatible

practices in the agricultural sector, ready to revitalise

marginal rural areas or to protect and recover

traditional crops and biodiversity? Above all: what is

their relationship, their need for technology?

Within this varied world there are experiences

such as the one developed by the artistic collective

Futurefarmers founded and animated since 1995 by

personalities of the technological scene of the Bay

Area such as Amy Franceschini. The

multidisciplinary group explores issues concerning

the role of urban agriculture and citizenship

participation – e.g. the Victory Gardens project in

2006 then became The Urban Garden Registry and

exhibited at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale in

2012 – or the relationship between tradition and

technologies. In the Ethnobotanical Station – a

workshop and an online tool developed in 2012

(futurefarmers.com/ebotanical) – “a mobile module

[drawn] upon a diverse lineage of knowledge to study

the complex relations between plants and humans. It

brings in the question our faith in modern

quantitative science as compared to the long tradition

of qualitative indigenous knowledge. An inventory of

distinctive tools, hands-on workshops and mappings

are the vehicle for research and sharing new

configurations of knowledge.” (Franceschini, 2012).

Alongside this neo-rural culture, which has a

powerful connection with the world of technology,

there are, however, realities where the potential of

agriculture 4.0 is grasped not as a goal in itself or as

a meta-project discourse, but as a tool to support

concrete results, in the field.

In the latter case, the people involved therefore

need distributed systems in the environment,

Industrial Internet of Things and smart technologies

that offer systems of interaction and calm interface. If

we extend the concept proposed by Weiser and

Brown (1995) the agritech applications must not

engage the peripheral attention of users, they must not

absorb energies, cognitive or not, in their learning,

decoding and monitoring process. The flow of

information from the territory, the environmental

conditions and the data collected in real time are used

to supervise the crops and to make informed decisions

that are optimized in relation to the context. User

research, user experience, and interface design,

multimodal and distributed are therefore key tools to

make the digital ecosystem accessible and useful

(Bollini, 2001). About the user interactions of the

OpenAg Ecosystem Harper claims: “as affective as it

is effective, and as desirable as it is accessible by

exploring how to incorporate the principles of human-

centered design, behaviour design, and calm

technology into user experience/user interaction. We

want to create emotionally-, socially-, and culturally-

intelligent food production technologies that respond

to and support folks who want to grow their own

food” (Harper, 2017).

4 APPROACHING THE

INTERFACE PROJECT IN

AGRICULTURE

Innovation in the agricultural sector is today one of

the greatest issues put in place also by the European

Union, as demonstrated within the specific objectives

of Horizon 2020, as necessary in order to respond to

problems (European and global), in the field

reduction of resources, increase in production costs,

and lowering of sales, environmental pollution and

climate change. According to the United Nations’

Food and Agriculture Organization (2018), food

production is expected to increase by at least 60% by

2050 in order to compensate for the increase in the

world population, which is expected to reach 9 billion

people. Technological innovation plays a key role in

the resolution of these issues. Precision agriculture,

as stated by Godwin (2003), is an example of

increasing crop performance through the

rationalization of inputs and the reduction of crop and

environmental costs. Nowadays, the integration

between precision agriculture and ICT has allowed

the definition of the so-called Agriculture 4.0 (De

Clercq, Vats, Biel, 2018) and Internet of Farming or

the application of different technological systems

aimed at improving agricultural production in terms

of yield and environmental sustainability, quality and

safety of the product along the whole supply chain

and transformation, as well as within the working

conditions.

HCI, interaction design and non-traditional

interface forms can provide solutions to the initial

difficulties of integrating technology with traditional

work as well as becoming an instrument for

anticipating emerging needs and demands from the

user (Harper, Rodden, Rogers, and Sellen, 2007).

Considering therefore the difficulties in approaching

WEBIST 2019 - 15th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

276

new methods and techniques, in agreement with

Rodriguez, Fernandez, and Hormazabal (2018), the

role of HCI and User Interfaces in agriculture can and

must be decisive, going beyond the interaction for

GUI – Graphic Human Interface – linked to a screen,

but going further rethinking the concept of interface

in a broader sense and integrating the normal GUI

into non-traditional interface forms that Kortum

(2007) divides into 11 groups: haptic, gestures,

movements, hearing, vocal action, interactive voice

response, smell, taste, interfaces on small screens,

bimodal and multimodal. It is clear that the big

question is not in itself generating new ICT tools but

rather defining the relationship between farmers/data

in order to mitigate and make the use of technology

efficient, making it easy to access and understand,

breaking the cultural barrier that sees agriculture as

an activity goes beyond the technology, offering a

non-traditional farmer-friendly interface based on a

new concept of HCD – Human Centered Design –

(Cooley, 1989) that it could be called Human-

Decentered Design (Bottà, 2018), a new and

contemporary approach to UI and UX design that

moves from the service experience thinking to the

ecological experience system. In this approach, the

design of the interface is not framed into the screen

and its relationship with the user, but focus on a

triangular relation based on user-technology-

environment. The design of the new interface could

work on this new paradigm, trying to understand the

real effect of what you could do thanks to Smart

Farming. It’s not a game as FarmVille, it is the real

environment – therein lies the innovation. For this

reason, the role of interface designer – and also of the

other form of that – must be considered as a strategic

role, from a systemic point of view.

4.1 A Human Decentered Approach to

Nowadays we are living in a pervasive information

society (Resmini, Rosati, 2011), in which data are all

around us, move by the internet and envelop us totally

- Internet of Things - changing many aspects of our

lives. Despite a wide range of information, without a

structure they end up becoming just “noise” -

destructive and disinterested information. In

agreement with Tufte (1997), it is possible to

understand the management role of a designer who

manages data by visualization. In the agricultural

field – for example – data are shown as charts mostly.

All the data generated by the different sensors are

visualized in these simple ways. Because of that, into

an architecture of contents, information began

interface (Tufte, 1997). The definition of interactive

is not linked in itself to the sense of digital but to the

level of affordance as theorized by J. J. Gibson

(Norman, 2013), or as the property to facilitate use

and effectively respond to user actions.

The changing contexts of application of the

interface design – moving historically from teletype,

punched cards, keyboard, mouse and touch screen

and beyond (Billinghurst, 2019) - poses the key

question on how designers should approach the

interaction project that goes beyond the screen and

envelops the environment (Billinghurst, 2019). The

inputs, outputs and even the scenarios are different.

In the past, technologies allowed us to see in an

imaginary world made of windows and icons (Laurel,

2013). Today, digital and physical world seems to

collide each other. Digital technologies and the

internet of things can generate the most from the

trans-disciplinary nature of interaction design

discipline in which visual contents, elements of

cognitive psychology, behavioural, contest history

and place are mixed together, and today, thanks to the

pervasive technologies involved, architectural

aspects too. Who is the interface designer today and

in the future? From a methodological point of view,

what are the professional skills that a designer must

have? Taking up a famous passage by Giovanni

Anceschi (2006), about the theme of the project

compared to the new digital media, he replied that the

role of the designer is comparable to Content DJ, who

selects, samples, and re-combines the elements of a

project to design a better solution despite the context

of use. The importance of the educational and

communication factor in the interaction process, if

applied to a sector such as that of agriculture, needs a

total re-definition of its paradigms and its language,

having to deal with the socio-cultural context

(Meroni, 2016).

The art of the mixite is one of the hardest skills of

the design approach, but the method is changing. In

agreement with Martino (2012, 2011, 2010), the way

in which the contamination of [different] cultures

with other artistic traditions and with different

knowledge is being implemented today is certainly

new: A modality based on a “mutual recognition” and

with a consequent “support of otherness”. This

approach could be clearly transferred to the

contemporary UI design discipline where interface is

not yet a screen, but it could be anything and applied

everywhere. Maybe it’s time to go beyond the UI

guidelines in order to achieve the different and new

context in which the designer could be asked to put

their skills. How can a UI designer in the ubiquitous

information society do this without losing their

Interfaces of the Agriculture 4.0

277

nature? In this scenario, big/small Data and Farmer

are not so far from each other if there is the presence

of a director who manages, structures and designs the

information in a living context: this is the director UI

designer who designs – by a Human Decentered

Approach – for a multimodal environment,

according to an intertextual scheme of the various

modes of expression, which are activated in the

presence of the co-authorial figure of the user

(Bollini, 2004). The new reality brings with it the

need to no longer see the end user as a generalized

target of the project, but to make it a “designer” in all

the phases of the project in a Co-Design perspective

view (Rizzo, 2018) and in the desire to offer an

interface/product in which information and data

empowers the collaborative remixability of Dybward

(Manovich, 2005) – i.e. the customization of the data

visualization – by graphics, or sounds - that come

closest to the user’s mental pattern.

This approach could clearly help the digital

metabolization of people with lower IT skills or to

ease the technological transfer from analogical

practices to digital ones. For the best possible result,

the involvement of farmers becomes instrumental for

the purposes of technological metabolization; to place

the farmer not as a final target and passive spectator,

but as an active part of the process so as to aim the

process of mitigation, appropriation (Preece, et al.,

2002) and passage from a “traditional” cultivation

method to the 4.0 method.

4.2 A Conversational Interface for

Agriculture

In 2015, IKEA founded Space 10 – innovation hub –

to extend its concept of creative freedom to a global

network of collaborators, allowing them to freely

explore topics such as food security, urbanization,

health and well-being and other macro-trends (Le

Pluart, 2016). Inside the hub, multidisciplinary teams

come together to imagine and design the world of the

future with an emphasis on sustainability and total

accessibility. One major topic is urban farming and

home-grown vegetables using the hydroponic

technique and to do this, the Space10 team re-create

an indoor cultivation totally monitored by sensors.

The aim of Space10 was not only to put the

already existing sensors and technologies in the field

of hydroponic cultivation into a system – but also to

offer in a single simple and accessible interface – a

whole series of data necessary for the improvement

of the cultivation, through a totally spontaneous

mode: the voice. This is Sprout: a conversational

interface. It is possible to ask questions about the

plants and it “talks” back via Google Home’s small

speaker (Ikea Space10, 2018). The importance of the

Space10 project can be linked to two key concepts in

the development of contemporary interfaces: the

design of a non-traditional Human Computer

Interface (Kortum, 2007) in terms of accessibility to

a large amount of data to farmers or not, and the

importance of the interoperability between different

sensors in order to achieve a better solution to grow

plants and to resolve possible diseases. As we said,

Sprout is a conversational interface designed with the

aim of creating a natural link between people - who

want to explore hydroponic agriculture - and “plants”.

Cultivation, in general, is a demanding task for

farmers, who usually “understand” the plants’

behaviour just by experience and simple tools. Time

and crop selection are critical to product quality and

resource use, logistics and disease/pest control

requirements are high. Thanks to a conversational

interface, a natural language is used to interact,

allowing normal people or the new Digital Farmer a

better and easier understanding of what plants need

and make the right choice. For home-made farming,

there’s no necessity – even if it would be always right

– to have high agricultural skills because all the

information you should know are processed and

available just with a voice. If we consider Sprout as

an educational tool, we can clearly notice a bridge

between past and future. In ancient times, techniques

and knowledge – based on hands-on experience -

were handed down by oral transmission, by voice,

father to son and so on. A Conversational Interface

uses the same approach, going beyond the screen and

going back to the “voice” – even if it’s an artificial

one – remixing past and future.

From an interoperability point of view, Sprout

takes another step forward to the current state of the

art of sensors in agriculture. The data generated by the

different sensors – soil pH control, nitrate level,

humidity, water and temperature – are processed by

an algorithm based on machine learning that can thus

offer real-time data and forecasts on the possible

actions to be taken for the development of cultivation.

All the information is processed through the Google

Home’s voice-assistant platform, thus offering a clear

and accessible unified non-traditional interface.

Sprout represents one of the possible applications

of the contemporary approach to UI. In this new

scenario, the interface is the key point in which

computer science, biology, heritage and behaviour

are completely mixed and re-mixed in order to

achieve a new way of living.

WEBIST 2019 - 15th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

278

5 CONCLUSIONS

Information technologies have a huge and pervasive

impact on many aspects of our present and future

lives. In particular, IT applied to traditional sectors

like agriculture are changing it on very different

scales: they impact the production process and the

supply chain both at the massive and the micro level,

they improve strategic decisions and controls thanks

to the use of big and local data collected from the

environment, and furthermore, they provide

companies and individuals with tools to directly

connect them with the physical space.

Nevertheless, Agriculture 4.0 and data-driven

decisions should meet user needs and expectations:

design, therefore, serves as a mediator and an enabler

both in a functional and cognitive way, between the

potentiality of the digital revolution and the real

demands of the people involved. Moreover, it is

fundamental when users are asked to interact with a

complex system without necessarily being expert in

the digital domain. If the data is never neutral and

needs interpretation, as a designer who de-signs,

selects, re-elaborates the contents how will we design

information in terms of accessibility, usability,

consistency and language? Today, should the visual

grammar of interaction with information be rewritten

in light of the expansion of contexts of use and

subjects?

According to Drucker (2014), technological

development has meant that the interface design was

dominated by a rationalist and functionalist attitude,

deriving from Computer Science and Information

Architecture. The interface is not an object but an

environment (Drucker, 2014) that through its

language favours a specific activity, mediating

between the computer patterns and the mental ones of

the subject. How and what does the designer translate

(Baule, Carratti, 2016) in terms of visual grammar,

signs and behaviour? What will remain of the visual

apparatus of individual knowledge? Designing with

the user (Rizzo, 2018) how can it absorb and integrate

the historical-visual anamnesis of the subject and its

activities, thus creating a bridge between tradition and

process innovation?

Interface design thus becomes the place where the

role and success of Agriculture 4.0 is strategically

played; a field in which the cultural and ethical role

of design, as a tool for preserving - enhancing -

increasing the cultural heritage of the traditional

professions currently invested by the digital

revolution, becomes “conditio sine qua non“ of the

interface design project: towards an ecology of the

man-information-context system.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Although the paper is a result of the joint work of all

the authors, Carlo Martino is in particular author of

paragraphs 2, Letizia Bollini of paragraph 3 and

Alessio Caccamo of paragraph 4.

REFERENCES

Auernhammer, H. 2001. Precision farming-the

enviromental challenge. Computer & electronics in

agriculture, Boni, S. 2014. Homo Faber. Edizioni

Eleuthera. Milan.

Anceschi G., Botta, M., Garrito, G., 2006. L’ambiente

dell’apprendimento. Web design e processi cognitivi.

McGraw Hill. Milan.

Anderson, C., 2006. The Long Tail: Why the Future of

Business is Selling Less of More. Hyperion. New York

Baule, G., Carratti, E., 2016. Design è traduzione. Il

paradigma traduttivo per la cultura del progetto.

«Design e traduzione»: un manifesto. Franco Angeli.

Milan.

Bauman, Z., 2013. La ricchezza di pochi avvantaggia tutti.

Falso!. Laterza. Bari.

Billinghurst, M., 2019. What is AR?. In Fink, C..

Convergence: How The World Will Be Painted With

Data. Convergence Press. New York

Fink, Charlie. Convergence: How The World Will Be

Painted With Data (p.11). Edizione del Kindle.

Bollini, L., 2001. Multimedialità vs. Multimodalità. Il

Verri, 16: 144-148

Bollini, L., 2004. Registica Multimodale: il design dei New

Media. CLUP. Milan.

Bollini, L. and Cerletti, V., 2009. Knowledge sharing and

management for local community: logical and visual

georeferenced information access. In International

Conference on Enterprise Information Systems and

Web Technologies (EISWT-09). ISRST

Bollini, L., 2016. Large, small, medium. Progettare la

comunicazione nell’ecosistema digitale. Maggioli

Editore. Rimini.

Bongiovanni, R., Lowenberg-Deboer, J. 2004. Precision

Agriculture and Sustainability, in Precision Agriculture

Journal, n° 5, Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Netherlands.

Brenda, L., 2013. Computer as Theatre(2nd edition).

Addison-Wesley Professional. Boston.

Bottà, D., 2018. User eXperience design. Progettare

esperienze di valore per utenti e aziende. Hoepli. Milan

Cosenza, V. 2012. La società dei dati. 40K Unofficial.

Milan.

Cooley, M., 1989. Human-Centred System. In Designing

Human-centred Technology. The Springer Series on

Artificial Intelligence and Society. London.

De Clerq, M., Vats, A., Biel, A., 2018. Agriculture 4.0 : the

future of farming technology. World Government

Summit 2018.

Interfaces of the Agriculture 4.0

279

URL:

https://www.worldgovernmentsummit.org/api/publicat

ions/document?id=95df8ac4-e97c-6578-b2f8-

ff0000a7ddb6

Dionisi, T., 2016. Interview to Prof. Anna Meroni

[Interview by T. Dionisi]. Design e Agricoltura.

Strumenti e metodi per il trasferimento

dell’innovazione in agricoltura. (PhD Thesis, Sapienza

– University of Rome, Rome).

Drucker, J., 2014. Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge

Production. Harvard Univ Pr. Boston.

Ethno-Botany, encyclopaedia entry - Lessico del XXI

secolo, Vol. I. Edizione Istituto della Enciclopedia

Italiana fondata da Giovanni Treccani. Rome.

Franceschini, A., 2012. Ethnobotanical Station. In

Futurefarmers.

URL:

http://www.futurefarmers.com/projects/ethnobotanical

Gallow, S., 2015. The Four Horsemen: Amazon/ Apple/

Facebook & Google. Who Wins/Loses. In DLD

Conference

URL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCvwCcEP74Q&

feature=youtu.be

Godwin, R. J., 2003. An economic analysis of the potential

for precision farming in UK cereal production in

Biosystems Engineering. 84(4): 533-545

Harper, C., 2017. 2017: The OpenAg Ecosystem Expands -

Research, Non-Profit, Ventures, Medium

URL: https://medium.com/@calebgrowsfood/2017-the-

openag-ecosystem-expands-research-non-profit-

ventures-b5762beed64b

Horizon 2020.

URL:http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h20

20-section/food-security-sustainable-agriculture-and-

forestry-marine-maritime-and-inland-water

Howden, S.M., Soussana, J., Tubiello, F., Chhetri, N.,

Dunlop, M. Meinke, H. 2007. Adapting agriculture to

climate change in PNAS. Wiliam Esaterlin.

Pennsylvania State University.

Klein, N., 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs.

the Climate. Simon & Schuster. New York.

Kortum, P., 2007. HCI Beyond the GUI: Design for Haptic,

Speech, Olfactory, and Other Nontraditional

Interfaces. Morgan Kaufmann. Burlington.

Krishna, K.R., 2013. Agroecosystems. Soils, Climate,

Crops, Nutrient Dynamics and Productivity. Apple

Academic Press. NY.

Ison, R., Russell, D., 2000. Agricultural Extension and

Rural Development: Breaking out of Knowledge

Transfer Traditions. Cambridge University Press.

Boston.

IKEA Space10, 2018. Sprout: Talk with your plants URL:

https://space10.io/project/sprout/

Latouche, S., 2004. Survivre au développement. De la

décolonisation de l’imaginaire économique à la

construction d'une société alternative. Mille et une

nuits. Paris.

Latouche, S. 2007. Petit traité de la décroissance sereine.

Mille et une nuits. Paris

Le Pluart, Joanna, 2016. Secret Innovation Lab Revealed,

in IKEA Highlights 2016. URL:

https://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/this-is-ikea/ikea-

highlights/IKEA-secret-innovation-lab/index.html

Maldonado, T. (1987) Il Futuro della Modernità.

Feltrinelli. Milan.

Manovich, L., 2005. Remixability and Modularity. URL:

http://manovich.net/content/04-projects/046-

remixability-and-modularity/43_article_2005.pdf

Martino, C., 2012. Design, verso una riscoperta della

cultura materiale, in Op.Cit., selezione della critica

contemporanea, 143. Edizioni Electa, Naples.

Martino, C., 2011. Territorio come facilitatore di processo

A helping hand from the local area. In Design for made

in Italy. Sistema design nelle imprese di Roma e del

Lazio 12.

Martino, C., 2010. Orienti Mitici, in MIXDESIGN, web

magazine – www.mixdesign.it,

URL:www.mixdesign.it/Orienti-mitici_think_x_4186.html

Meroni, A., 2005. Strategic design for the food sector.

Food-system innovation. Agrindustrial Design. Ist

Product and service design symposium and exhibition

olive oil, wine and design. Izmir

Nielsen, J., 2004. Undoing the Industrial Revolution in

Nielsen Norman Group.

URL: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/undoing-the-

industrial-revolution/

Norman, D., 2013. The Design of Everyday things. Basic

Books. New York.

OpenAG Initiative, 2015.

URL: https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-

openag/overview/

OSSERVATORIO STAMRT AGRIFOOD. URL:

https://www.osservatori.net/it_it/glossario-agricoltura-

4-0

Preece, J., Rogers, Y., & Sharp, H., 2002. Interaction

design: Beyond human-computer. John Wiley & Sons

Inc. Hoboken.

Resmini, A., Rosati, L., 2011. Pervasive Information

Architecture: Designing Cross-Channel User

Experiences. Morgan Kaufmann. Burlington.

Rizzo, F., 2018. Strategie di co-design. Teorie, metodi e

strumenti per progettare con gli utenti. Franco Angeli.

Milan.

Rodríguez, A., Fernández, A., Hormazábal, J. H., 2018.

Beyond the GUI in agriculture: a bibliographic review,

challenges and opportunities in Interacción 2018.

35(18).

Tufte, E., 1997. Visual explanations. Graphic Press.

Cheshire.

Verganti, R., 2009. Design-driven Innovation: cambiare le

regole della competizione innovando radicalmente il

significato dei prodotti e dei servizi. Rizzoli Etas.

Milan.

Weiser, M. and Brown, JS., 1995. Designing Calm

Technology. In Xerox PARC.

WEBIST 2019 - 15th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

280