Building Intuitive Plant Care

Smart Seed is an exploratory app aiming to create an intuitive interaction with plants. Through two research-based activities, design practices were used to visualize, reflect, and improve the concept.

ROLE: Product Design, Research

METHODS & TOOLS: User Research, Research Synthesis, High-Fidelity Mockups, IDEO Method Cards | Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator

TIMELINE & TEAM: 6 Weeks | Researcher & Designer

GENERAL TARGET AUDIENCE: 20-30s humans who care about plant health

Opportunity Space

There was a clear opportunity space through early research in millennials. There are so many kinds of plants, and people are usually unsure how to take care of them the best way possible. I’m aiming to improve the treatment of plants and help users keep them alive through an app that provides mentorship. Thirty percent of all households have at least one houseplant, and one-third of these plant purchases were made by millennials. More millennials are tending to gravitate towards houseplants because they live in urban environments. The goal of Smart Seed is that the user feels more confident and more involved in the plant-care process – #PlantParenthood.

Brief

This concept is inspired by plant users and product experiences I’ve encountered while digging for effective ways for taking care of my plants. What you’re about to see is a sample of work that I’ve designed, but has not been developed and released! I’ve outlined two key goals for the prototype:

  1. How might we make the plant-caring experience process more personal and intuitive for Millennials?

  2. How might we tell the story of plants to users in a compelling way that inspires lasting commitment?

Research & Learning

Getting started, hearing directly from potential users was important to me. A tool I used to help explore new approaches to researching were IDEO Method Cards. The methods ranged from looking into a day in the life of a plant-lover, asking users to create cognitive maps, and analyzing competitive products. I listened to user frustrations and empathized with their busy schedules.

After interviewing 21 users, ranging from college students to coffee shop baristas, I’ve condensed the findings to seven points to focus on – live updates, sorting & filtering, social media access, application usability, specific plant views, plant information management, and a notification system.

The Problem

Millennials are constantly on the move. After asking the basic questions on plant care-taking habits and conducting research on competitive products, I was able to identify the needs of users who own plants. The biggest problem found was that users were too busy throughout the week to remember to water their plants. A need discovered was that users wants the process of taking care of their plants to be organized and fun.

Iterating Solutions

Looking at competitive products helped me find solutions for making the application more unique. To satisfy the user’s frustrations about finding time and getting more organized, the home page is a quick overview of which plants needs to be watered that day and the week.

I started out with rough thumbnail sketches, which led to a wireframe. During that process, my main concern was to find out which features needed to be represented by focusing on the previously mentioned user needs and motivations.

REDO THE UX MAPPING

The goal of this app was to give the user ways to learn more about their plants, methods of taking care of plants, and then notifications to water or change the soil of plants.

The wireframe starts with an introduction and welcome screen that will lead the user to either choose logging in or creating an account and profile. Once the user logs in or has a profile created, they’re able to view the four main pages and features in the app - watering, discover, my plants, and my profile. The images help the user see which plants they own and how articles relate to a certain topic.

High Fidelity Mobile Flow

The design provides a simple navigation system and allows the user to easily move from one page to the next. A navigation bar that is fixed in position while scrolling on the screens allows it to be accessible and easy to find. Using effortless swiping and clicking gestures, the user will be able to comfortably sift through the app, no matter which screen they’re on.