Plantae, an app designed for plant care enthusiasts.

The Challenge

Our team's job was to research, prototype, test, and validate an idea for a brand-new mobile application. We were asked to solve a real, clearly identified need in users’ everyday lives. When brainstorming what problems we could solve through the use of an app, it came to mind how many people currently own or wish to own plants, as well as struggle to care for them due to lack of plant care knowledge or forgetfulness. Plant ownership is incredibly common; according to statistica.com, 33.1 million people in 2019 owned plants, meaning that Plantae had the potential to benefit a very large & diverse set of users. With this insight we began to realize the potential of letting scope- creep interfere with creating the most effective app for our users, though with careful research and planning, our team was able to determine the most valuable features for Plantae users.

My Role

UX Designer, UX Researcher, User Testing

Project Duration

Two Weeks

Research

For the research phase, we began by conducting one on one interviews and collecting and analyzing that data along with the responses we received from our Google survey. Through this research we discovered that out of those surveyed, 66.6% of people were interested in learning about plant care, and 78% were interested in owning plants. Also, out of those surveyed, 60% currently owned plants, though 82% did not currently have a routine schedule in place to care for their plant(s). During our one on one interviews, we became very aware of the differing level of plant knowledge our interviewees had. Some interviewees already owned over 30 plants and already had lots of knowledge on plants and plant care, while other interviewees did not own any plants, though stated their interest in owning one, citing the reasons for not owning a plant due to lack of plant knowledge, fear of killing them (forgetfulness), and a busy schedule. Based on our research we found that:

• Users needed a simplified method for managing plant care routines, and a place to find plant care insight.

• We needed to Prioritize the implementation of plant care schedules, and reminders for basic plant care using device notifications.

• Implementing a community feature to celebrate plant growth, and provide a network for additional plant insight would be beneficial.

Definition

Once we analyzed our research, we then defined our problem statement; "Plantae believes that providing easy instructions and regular notifications for plant care will result in plant owners being equipped with knowledge for how to ensure a long and healthy life for their plants.”
For our user insights we concluded eager plant enthusiasts need ways to receive reminders for soil changes, watering, and sunlight because a lack of routine on plant care has decreased plant life and health.
Our surveys found 81.8% of participants actually did not have a dedicated plant care schedule. Providing users with an application that gives consistent plant care reminders will increase plant longevity and health.
We then created a proto- persona of whom we believed would be a potential user of Plantae.

Ideation

During this phase we began to brainstorm how a potential user would begin their journey with Plantae; what would motivate them to download the app and what would motivate them to return to it time and time again.

Our group began to ideate on what features would best work for Plantae users as well as potential future developments. For our main features, we decided to begin with an optional survey to recommend a plant best suited to the user's lifestyle, we also included a notification and plant care schedule tab for the users current plants, a community forum to connect with and ask questions to other plant care enthusiasts, and a plant database which informs the user about a desired plant that they can either manually search for or use their camera for quick look up purposes.

For the user journey we focused on a particular user who has a busy schedule, as well as little prior knowledge of plant care. They would find Plantae through a desire to care for another life while stuck in a particularly bad mental rut. Plantae presented itself as the best option since it would recommend the best plant based on their lifestyle, offer a community forum for help with plant care questions, as well as the reminders feature which would alert the user when the plant requires attention.

After finalizing the features we wanted we created a user flow, laying potential paths the user may take to reach their desired outcome. The user flow would later serve as a starting point for our prototype.

Prototyping

After the user flow was complete we each created simple paper prototypes to demonstrate how we believed the interface should look. We pitched what ideas from our prototypes we felt worked best and then went on to creating our final prototype.

Testing

Usability testing allowed us to gain valuable user insight. For the usability tests we had five different tasks for the five users to complete, which included:

• We asked the user to first sign up with Plantae, with a success rate of 100%.

• Task 2 was to complete the survey to find their plant recommendations with a success rate of 100%

• Task 3 was to add a plant from the survey results to the user's plant wishlist with a success rate of 90%, with one user needing some direction to complete the task.

• The next task was to add a new plant to the users "My Plants" page via the camera option with a success rate of 80%, with two users failing to navigate to the "add with camera" option.

• The final task was to create a post on the community page with a success rate of 80%.

After these initial tests we then asked the users to give us their final thoughts on the prototype, where some stated confusion with checkboxes on the survey results page, of which were intended to be used when a user wants to add certain plants from the survey to their wishlist. After this feedback, we changed to a button with text "Add Plant". Users also stated confusion when attempting to find the wishlist page, which was originally navigated to with a click of the star icon. After this feedback, we incorporated a toggle feature on the "My Plants" page, where the user can toggle between their plants and their wish list.

Conclusion and Future Goals

Plantae was the first group project for the Georgia Tech bootcamp I participated in. The experience of working with a group on a project starting from conception to a final prototype in just two weeks over Zoom was eye-opening. I realized the importance of communication as well as compromise, as a few times during this project we did not always see eye-to-eye on certain choices. I also learned the importance of making decisions based on data and feedback, since the design is for what the users state they need, not what I think they need.

For the future of Plantae, we hope to add more in-depth design for the app, specifically more color added to certain UI elements like icons, popups, and certain text.
We also hope to add additional enhancements to the community feature, including the ability to add topics to posts, filter for these topics, and follow certain posts of interest and other users.
We also believe a live chat with "Plant doctors' to diagnose a user's plant issues to be of potential interest, as well as the addition of Google Maps to find nearby plant shops.