Green Thumb
An application that allows the user to keep track of their garden in a visually unique way while informing them about the needs of their plants.
Role: UX Design
Duration: 1 day
Role: UX Design
Duration: 1 day
The Goal: assisting newbies with house plant care
I started by seeking to understand the pain points and their corresponding design considerations by trying to myself in the user’s point of view.
Pain Points
“Arghhh” - I keep forgetting
“Whaaaa” - How did it die?
“Hmmm” - what did the tag say again?
There seems to be a lot of mystery and confusion when a house plant seems fine one day and near death the next. There’s a common misconception that all it takes for all plants to survive is just the occasional watering. While that’s true there’s many other factors that need to be taken into consideration.
Considerations
Reminders
How much - water, light
How often - water
Seasonal influence
Geography
Sunlight -> Outdoor vs Indoor
_____ -> direct vs indirect
Keeping these pain points and considerations in mind I did a crazy 8 brainstorming exercise to come up with potential solutions. My initial focus being to find the best solution for the user without the limitations of cost and feasibility.
I created a storyboard exploring the the user's discovery and usage of the solution.
I chose aspects from the different ideas to come up with the solution I wanted to move forward with by consistently asking what would be the most helpful to the user for keeping the houseplants alive. Taking the personification, the monitoring, and holistic plant library view I sought to create a fun, informative mobile application that educates the user and shows the progress of the plants.
For the visual design and content I looked at different applications with a similar goal. I wanted to understand why they included what they did and how their visual aesthetic affected the experience of using the application.
Thinking about:
How much to communicate
How to personalize & humanize
I worked on finding a balance between them.
The resulting design provides a holistic view of the user’s house plants in the environment of their choosing (home office, living room, bedroom etc.)
Tapping a specific plant allows the user to view the plant's care information, set reminders, and the plant's nickname. The personification of the plant encourages the user to nurture the plant and view it more as a living creature rather than a static item.
Tapping the watering can brings the user to the reminder view letting them keep track of which plants to check or water as well as set the notification timing.
One of the major pain points and important onboarding feature is how to identify the plant type and its associated needs. My solution includes using Google lens to identify the plant as well as an alternative quiz option that narrows down the plant type using key characteristics.
This design challenge was so much fun and I learned so much about how important it is to be able to bounce ideas off people throughout the process. Getting an outside view is important to expanding your mindset. One thing missing from this challenge since it was done in such a short time frame was not being able to get feedback from the users. I would have liked to run the solutions by actual users to confirm that I was on the right track and keep the solution true to the problem faced. That being said this was an amazing opportunity to unleash my creativity by stepping outside my comfort zone, trying a new illustration style, and incorporating new technology as part of the solution like the google lens.