Happy Plant
Designing a digital experience for plant care
TIMELINE
May - Aug 2021 (12 weeks, passion project)
PLATFORM
Mobile
MY ROLE
UX researcher, Product Designer
TOOLS
Miro, Figma, Ottor, Zoom, Pen, Paper
Overview
With the growing popularity of indoor plants, many people who buy plants end up with sick and wilting plants. It can be tough to take care of your new plants since every plant has different characteristics and needs. The Happy Plant app is designed to ease the effort and simplify the experience for plant owners.
Project objectives
Design a mobile app experience that gives plant owners the basic foundation to look after their plants.
My role
I led the design of this project from end to end. I was responsible for conducting research, wireframing, prototyping and testing.
The design process
I followed the human-centred design process to investigate how people looked after their plants and what kind of problems they faced when looking after their plants. Letting user research be my guide, I brainstormed and designed multiple solutions. I then tested my ideas via usability tests and developed a high-fidelity interactive prototype based on our findings.
The problem
Plant lovers, who are busy, and tech-savvy, need to confidently care for their plants in order to spend more time doing the things that they love.
Research and discovery
Survey
I conducted a survey and gathered nine responses. The survey allowed me to discover the target user demographics, their biggest concerns and their general thoughts and feelings towards plant care.
User interviews
I spoke to three people who owned indoor plants. To further uncover their pain points I dug deeper into how they currently look after their plants, what they do when a problem occurs, and their preferences in the product features.
Competitor analysis
I analysed five direct competitors to understand what a app good experience looks like, what could be improved, and how I could move forward with my ideas.
The survey results revealed…
I kicked off the research by sharing a to plant owners on a work slack channel to learn about the target users and their frustrations. Here I was also able to recruit users for my interviews.
I learned that even though most people considered themselves beginners and did not have extensive knowledge of plant care, that did not stop them from owning an average of 17 indoor plants.
Watering wasn’t the only main concern people had. People were also concerned about how to keep their plants healthy and thriving. This included how much sunlight their plants should have access to and how to keep plants pest-free.
Plant survey 2021, 8 responses by plant owners
What people were saying…
“If I noticed that they look a bit sad. I'll just like give them a bit of water and hope for the best.”
“There was too much varying information. I didn't know which one was the best to follow.”
“[Plant apps are] all quite one dimensional. There isn't like that one cohesive experience, which is what I'm looking for.”
Key finding and insights
I spoke to a small number of users, digging deeper into understanding the pain points they faced with plant care. Then I sorted and grouped our data into themes on an affinity map. Most people reported that they did not follow a strict plant care routine and relied on the plant’s physical appearance to take the necessary action. Listed below are the key insights we discovered.
Biggest plant care problem
People were unsure of basic care requirements like when and how much water/ sun their plants should be getting. Most people reported that they don’t have a plant care routine and will attend to the plants weekly or when they see their plants were in trouble.
Confusing information
People felt confused when searching for information online because there were several sources. In the end, they lost confidence to find reliable information because they were unsure if the advice was relevant to their particular plant concern
No mobile app to rule them all
One app will do water reminders really well and others would have great plant care tips. There was no mobile app that met all of the user’s needs so they had to rely on multiple apps or sources.
Competitor analysis
I also analysed four direct competitors in the market to establish a benchmark and understand what kind of features users expected to see. It was true that there was no singular app that provided a great user experience. The micro-interactions were confusing and left it up to the user to figure out how to complete the tasks.
Personas
Who am I designing for?
My research provided me with enough information to build a persona. The persona helped me further empathise with their needs, frustrations and motivations. I focused on people who considered themselves as beginners and wanted to have a basic understanding of how they can look after their plants.
User journey map
What followed my efforts to map the user journey to identify how the persona would discover and interact with the app, as well as uncover any pain points and areas of opportunities during the journey.
Pain points
The feeling of frustration with conflicting information available online
“There’s too much information and a lot of it is based in US. I don’t know which one to follow“
The feeling of disappointment when users fail to find the exact problem their plants are experiencing
“Sometimes its similar but it’s not the exact problem“
Opportunities
Set up profile to include location of use so the information is relevant to the user
List of common plant problems for users to diagnose plant
Provide more diagnosis images for users to complete a greater comparison between their plant and the problem
Use simple language so users understand what’s required and don’t feel overwhelmed by the information
Ideation
How might we help plant lovers feel confident that they are looking after their plants properly?
Based on the research several people reported that keeping their plants healthy and thriving was their biggest problem. This sparked the question, how might we help plant lovers feel confident that they are looking after their plants properly?
Brainstorming
Next, I facilitated a workshop with four other UX designers to come up with ideas and nail down the how might we statement. Utilising the dot voting method allowed us to prioritise the features that we felt best solved the user problem.
Storyboard
A storyboard helped me to visually explain the end to end journey of the idea of diagnosing a plant problem. Below is a list of the important components of the plant diagnosis idea:
Who: Fiona is a plant lover and plant newbie.
What: She uses the app to identify what’s wrong with her plants and to learn the basics of watering, fertilising and the different type of light that her plants needs.
When: She usually looks after her plants when she can remember.
Where: She uses the app at home when she notices one of her plants looks sad and droopy.
Observation/ Facts: Fiona likes comparing her plant to multiple images before she confirms it’s the same problem. She enjoys seeing the progress of her plants.
Opportunities: A place/feature that allows users to capture images and notes of their plants so they can see the plant’s growth over time.
Defining MVP
From the ideation workshops, I went back to group similar ideas into themes. The features were listed and mapped based on complexity, potential business and user efficiency values. Below are the highest impact features that were expected to be included in the product design.
Plant care management
Provide individuals with the ability to diagnose and track their plants over time.
Plant advice
Provide individuals with simple and clear advice with different learning recommendations like videos, blogs, and comparison images.
Community
Provide individuals with the ability to share tips and knowledge.
Prototyping
Focusing on high impact features allowed me to create a story that could be split into a few major user scenarios: getting a quote, signing up, creating an account, and confirming the order. The below show major steps taken in the prototyping to bring our ideas to life:
User flow
I started by focusing on a specific user flow that would allow me to include the highest impact features.
Sketches
Rapid creation of key screens and features.
Lo-fi wireframes
Moving our sketches into digital mock ups and closer to life.
Usability testing
I tested the prototype on three users. Usability testing revealed that all users were able to successfully complete the task, but the UI was lacking engagement
I iterated the designs two times to reflect the feedback I received from user testing. The feedback validated my research and also gave insightful feedback on how we could improve the language and tweak elements of the visual hierarchy to ensure no information is missed.
Styling UI
I wanted to create a clean and minimal look and feel for the brand. This was important because the app is all about information. The app needed to be free from distraction allowing the users to follow along with the information easily.
For the colour palette, I decided to use green and a light terracotta as the primary colours, which embodies growth.
Final prototype
The final product featured onboarding, login, profile, plant screen, and a diagnose feature that guides users through their plant problems.
I set out to do one key feature at the beginning of the project, and I felt like I had accomplished a lot more than I thought I would get done design-wise.
Key learnings and takeaways
This project was my first introduction to user experience, and it was unlike anything I had done before. Here are some key takeaways I got from working on this project:
Designing for the user — I am not the user
At the end of the day, it’s the user’s pain points, not mine so keeping that in mind is important as it’s easy to lose sight of this when you working on a passion project. Moving forward to ensure that I have the users in mind I need to always refer back to the research artifacts to help keep me on the right track.
Don’t worry too much about the detail
I made the mistake of spending too much time worrying about how the UI might look. The goal is to reduce pain points that create delightful experiences, and visual design is only half of the user experience.
Don’t be afraid of feedback
Negative feedback is something no one wants to hear especially spending hours of hard work on it. But, it’s what improves your ideas and designs. I was glad I took the time to listen to users and took the time to do another round of iteration because it really paid off when I tested it for a second time.