Faced with complex social and industrial conditions, the easiest mistake to make when applying design thinking is to rush into solutions based on scattered interview quotes. In the Discover stage, we conducted dense coding on 19 interviews—our "factual divergence phase". In the Define stage, the team's job is convergence: clustering hundreds of codes from different interviewees using an Affinity Diagram, extracting Themes and Insights, and then through deep discussion and prioritization, translating the most high-leverage problems into HMW (How Might We) challenges. Below is our convergence trajectory.
I. Affinity Diagram Convergence
A single stakeholder's words represent only a partial perspective. For example, while producers complain about cost, migrants worry about trust, and experiencers are confused by tedious farming tasks. If we only look at one side, the solution will be un-balanced. Our Affinity Diagram work was to lay out code cards from all 19 interviews, finding common patterns and tensions across roles (such as producers and pioneers, migrants and promoters). Through comparison, the teams clustered hundreds of codes into key themes.
| Clustered Core Theme | Qualitative Research Insight |
|---|---|
| #Technical Compromise & Market Differentiation | Organic smallholders face technical bottlenecks (like lime-free sugar processing). Blind capital spending causes severe financial/family risks. Liquid molasses serves as a low-cost compromise, but needs alignment with cooking habits for differentiation. |
| #Professional Delegation & Labor Mutual Aid | High-intensity farming and equipment shortages are mitigated by volunteers, cooperative cultivation, and outsourcing to reduce workload. |
| #Health Awareness & Food Safety Marketing | Positioning brands around 'all-natural' concepts, turning farms into educational spaces for raw food experiences. |
| #Opportunistic Local Resources & Adaptability | Using local resources (bamboo, straw) to cut transport/materials cost, and opting for weather-tolerant crops. |
| #Financial & Family Risks in Farm Capital | 農業試錯成本高，過度多元化導致虧損與家庭支持崩解，應低成本小步快跑驗證。 |
| #Inevitable Shift to Experience Economy | Raw produce yields thin profits. Storytelling and experience design are paths to survive. |
| #Labor Volatility & Lower Entry Barriers | As global work-exchange cools, short-term, low-skill options with good meals sustain farm reputation. |
| Clustered Core Theme | Qualitative Research Insight |
|---|---|
| #Local Materials for Experience Design | Farming experiences rely on existing crops and materials. The key is translating convenient items into local knowledge. |
| #Farming Difficulty & Physical Barrier Management | Farming value comes from labor, but weather and physical demands are barriers. Good experiences require level-based tasks so everyone can participate safely. |
| #Seasonal Labor & Activity Capacity Allocation | Experiences are limited by seasons and capacity. Production schedules must come first to prevent exhaustion. |
| #From Sightseeing to Deep Farming Experience | Visitors seek real local life and work, but still need clear packaging to make travel decisions. |
| #Food Processing & Origin Education Chain | Experiences shouldn't end at harvest; extending to cooking and food safety transforms them into lifelong habit shifts. |
| #Customer Acquisition Channels & Booking Journey | The booking journey spans social media, agencies, and calls. A smooth end-to-end user journey is needed. |
| #Farming Experience as Data Co-creation | Participants can help collect ecological data, turning the farm into a public knowledge producer. |
| #Long-term Internships & Homestay Immersion | Long-term stays allow farm rhythm and values to be fully internalized. |
| #Slow Island as Trust & Public Platform | Slow Island is built on years of organic farming and community trust. The service is a trust-maintaining platform. |
| #Land Connection & Life Transformation | Immersive labor helps participants reflect on family, dreams, and life choices. |
| Clustered Core Theme | Qualitative Research Insight |
|---|---|
| #Marriage & Migration Intersection | Marriage dictates migration paths—whether moving for a partner or returning to a spouse's hometown after years of family pressure. |
| #Spousal Collaboration & Co-decision | Major decisions are dynamic negotiations between couples, with roles shifting between supporter and decision-maker. |
| #Silent Power of Family Support & Risk Tolerance | Family support is often silent ('not stopping' them), which builds risk-taking confidence, though failure can turn it into opposition. |
| #De-elite Education & Autonomy | Shedding 'academic achievement = success' frameworks to emphasize interests and self-discovery. |
| #Child Placement under Urban-Rural Pull | When children need urban coaching/resources, families must dual-track, using rural childhood as foundation and city as professional outlet. |
| #Intergenerational Care & Multi-local Family | Lack of rural daycare requires family support networks (grandparents) to fill care gaps. |
| #Free-range Parenting & Childhood Independence | Tight-knit rural safety lets kids explore freely, building independence and risk tolerance. |
| #Family Land Inheritance & Intergenerational Choices | Inheritance is the physical basis for youth farming, but sparks friction over organic vs. conventional methods. |
| Clustered Core Theme | Qualitative Research Insight |
|---|---|
| #Urban-Rural Migration & Georelations Network | Leasing land relies on local connections; mainstream digital tools fail here, creating barriers for outsiders. |
| #Historical Trauma & Vacuum of Legal Protection | Trauma from historical land reforms makes elder landowners reject written leases, leaving new farmers without legal security. |
| #Push Factors & Lifestyle Choice | Rural migration is an escape from urban stress and a reclamation of life autonomy. |
| #Part-time Livelihood & Low Time Cost | Mechanization frees up farming time. Migrants must rely on remote/part-time professional jobs to secure stable cash flow. |
| #Atomized Individuals & Community Support | Highly independent migrants face loneliness, requiring soft local communities to support them. |
| #Professional Subjectivity & Intergenerational Pull | Mothers deep in activism may leave children lonely, but grown children accept their mothers' career through academic analysis. |
| #Safe Haven for Marginalized Groups | The rural environment serves as a safe physical haven for marginalized groups (e.g., lesbians) to escape family friction. |
II. Core Challenges & Prioritization
Faced with dozens of insights, the groups used a digital HMW board to classify challenges into "overcoming barriers", "creating positive outcomes", and "leveraging strengths". Through voting and card sorting, we translated the most high-leverage pain points into HMW design challenges.
Smallholder Branding & Value Chain Transformation
Team A debated "technical compromise" and "financial risks." Reviewing Ah-Cong's and Lai Qing-song's work, they realized blind spending on complex processors causes heavy family stress, whereas liquid molasses serves as a low-cost, differentiating "technical compromise." The team voted to focus on a branding toolkit rather than buying heavy equipment.
Selected Core InsightOrganic smallholders face technical bottlenecks (like lime-free sugar processing) that prevent solid block sugar production. Blind capital spending causes severe financial/family risks. Liquid molasses serves as a low-cost compromise, but needs alignment with cooking habits for differentiation. Smallholders need a branding toolkit to validate MVP value and map resources.
How might we design a low-barrier branding toolkit for smallholders to catalog crop resources, map customers, and validate MVP values?
Booking Flow & Relationship Continuity
Team B faced 10 themes on experience design. They debated host capacity limits and relationship disconnection after visits. The team combined booking flow pain points with homestay immersion. Single-visit marketing waste and low retention were verified as key limiters, voting to focus on relationship continuity.
Selected Core InsightFarming experiences face broken journeys: booking is scattered, anticipation fades before arrival, and no follow-up follows visits. This yields high acquisition costs for one-time tourists rather than building long-term community support for ecological farming.
How might we integrate scattered booking channels and design level-based journeys to sustain traveler anticipation and connection?
Childcare Support & Co-learning Networks
Team C focused on rural families. Smallholder parents face severe time conflicts between labor and childcare. After comparing urban nurseries with local neighborhood childcare, the team prioritized mutual childcare platforms as the solution that best leverages local social capital.
Selected Core InsightLack of rural childcare resources forces families to rely on complex grandparent arrangements or dual-tracking. Smallholder parents face double time constraints during busy seasons, requiring geographic and value-aligned mutual childcare support.
How might we combine geographic locations and educational concepts to build a low-barrier mutual childcare and co-learning platform, easing parenting stress during busy seasons?
Social Integration & Life Guides for Migrants
Team D debated georelations, leasing fears, and individual support systems. They realized mainstream rental platforms fail in rural areas; leasing land relies on local connections. The team voted to prioritize reducing this georelations barrier through a guide that makes implicit rules explicit.
Selected Core InsightWhen youth move to rural areas, the primary barrier is establishing trust and local networks, not agricultural techniques. Land rules and local social structures lack transparent translation, causing early social friction and failed migration projects.
How might we translate land leasing, income strategies, and local social rules into a three-stage integration guide, reducing barriers for new migrants?
With challenges defined, we have a firm foundation. In the Develop (Co-creation) stage, the teams will brainstorm and build prototypes to validate solutions!