Green Thumb
A concept project for a mobile application that helps people monitor the care of their plants.
MY ROLE
Ideation
Research
Wireframing
Prototyping
DURATION
2 months
Overview
How can people learn to take better care of their plants?
In my family, nurturing plants comes as a natural skill, unfortunately it’s one that I don’t obtain. After three dead succulents and two dead flowers I considered plant care completely out of my wheelhouse. Even with just two succulents at a time, I was finding it difficult to dictate what amount of water they needed and how often they should be watered. I soon realized that I wasn’t the only one with that issue.
Just a few short months after purchasing expensive plants from local nurseries, two of my friends replaced all of their wilted plants with fake plastic ones from Target.
THE PROBLEM
As each plant’s needs are individualized and unique, it becomes difficult for those who own plants to keep track of each of their individual needs
User Interviews
What information did people need to take better care of their plants?
With my own experience attempting to take care of plants and seeing my friends take care of theirs, I assumed that a lot of concern may come from determining how much water a plant need. Therefore, my initial assumptions were that water monitoring and scheduling would be most important to the user. However, to get a concrete understanding of what the users’ needs and pain points are when taking care of plants I did a mix of survey and over the phone interviews.
INTERVIEW GOALS
Learn what the user’s existing relationship is with plants.
Find what their existing struggles are when taking care of plants.
Determine what’s most important to them when searching for plants.
Discover how they typically find information about their houseplants.
Findings & Analysis
The pain points start with understanding plants maintenance and needs.
The most important information needed for users to properly take care of their plants were:
How much water
How much sunlight
How much maintenance they need
Users found it difficult to take care of multiple plants
It was difficult for people to figure out when they were overwatering or under watering their plants
Although most people learned about their plants through websites, they would be open to using an app
Due to the struggle people have managing their multiple plants and how often they water them, the main goal of the app would be to track plants, monitor maintenance, and create a watering schedule.
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People struggle to keep track of when they last watered their plants
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There’s a difficulty that exists when trying to manage multiple plants
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Determining how much sunlight plants need is a challenge for users
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People don’t know how often they should water their pants
DEFINING THE USER
Since plant owners can be any age, it creates a really widespread audience. However, because indoor plants require more monitoring than outdoor plants and users primary struggled with taking care of their houseplants, I decided to tailor the app to focus only on the care of indoor plants.
STORYBOARDING
To summarize what how I wanted the users to introduce the product into their lives, I created a storyboard that shows how someone would use the platform.
Designs
Focusing on how people would maintain their plants through the product.
LOW-FIDELITY
When creating prototypes for the platform, I focused on how the plants would be presented (by maintenance level, amount of necessary sunlight, etc). During this initial design phase, I intended the product to have a general search that would allow people to add plants to their personal water calendar.
Feedback
I conducted usability tests to see if the app was intuitive
The main constraint I had during this project was time. As a result, more assumptions had to be made since there were less user interviews than I would have preferred. However, I was able to share my initial prototypes with potential users to get feedback.
FILTER FEATURE
After getting user feedback, it was found to be ineffective to have all the plants listed on the page, instead there needed to be a filter feature to help users effectively find their plants.
CREATING THE CALENDAR AND SAVING FEATURE
Originally, the water notification was just a drop down feature but after user feedback I changed it to be a side scroll design. Users also requested a way to save the plants they’re interested in so that they can go back and look at it.
FUTURE FEATURES
After creating the original final version, I decided to go back to the project a year later with adjustments to the features. During this time I spoke to two users to see if advanced features would be useful for them:
Users had concerns about how to handle problems that arose with their plants (yellowing leaves, sagging plants, etc)
They wanted their quiz results to remain front and center
To help users understand what issues their plants were having at real time, I created a page where they could take a picture of their plant and get a diagnosis. I also made the quiz more visually appeal and it would remain on the home page, along with the plants that they’re monitoring.
High Fidelity
Designs with updated features that further address needs.
ONBOARDING
Sue is looking for some new house plants and a way to track her existing plants. On the app she takes a quick quiz to determine what plants would be right for her.
ADDING PLANTS TO THE WATER CALENDAR
Sue already has a couple of plants that she wants to track. She searches for them within the app and adds it to her watering calendar.
PLANT SCANNER
After some time Sue becomes concerned about her Jade plant when she notices yellow leaves. She uses the plant scanner to take a picture and have her plant diagnosed.
SEARCHING FOR PLANTS
Sue is looking to get a medium sized plant for her place. She goes to the app to browse all the plant and filters by those that are “medium” sized. Perfect for her space!
