PlantParent
The Problem
I love the way my plants make the house feel; the aspect of bringing nature inside. I do a pretty good job caring for my plants, but occasionally forget them when life gets busy. I noticed my friends having the same issue. This made me think of what I could do to make it easier on myself…and my friends.
My secondary research showed that the majority of people buying plants in the last few years were millennials; some of whom refer to themselves as a “plant parent”.
Seeing my friends plants and conducting secondary research is what made me decide to focus on millennial “plant parents” as my target user.
Plants have psychological and physiological benefits such as reducing stress and boosting mood and oxygen, yet plant care can create stress when plants are unhealthy or die. This led me to ask the question...
How Might We mitigate the stress of plant care so that people can enjoy the benefits of having plants in their home?
User Interviews
After doing secondary research and coming up with a research plan, I sent out a screener survey to recruit representative users to conduct interviews with. I wanted to learn what made people have plants in their homes and uncover what the biggest challenges people faced in caring for them.
Throughout the interviews I probed into why they had plants, how they made them feel, and what was challenging and enjoyable about having plants.
Synthesis and Analysis
Analysis of these interviews yielded enlightening results. Many of the themes that arose from interviews were consistent with my secondary research, solidifying the issue in my mind. From my interviews I learned that:
Plant owners love having plants, but found them difficult to care for.
Some were aware of the benefits plants provide while some reported that they just made them feel good.
Some had trouble finding plants that were easy to care for.
Most said that plants were difficult to care for and didnt know what to do when a plant was sick and dying.
All reported a level of stress or guilt for having killed a plant.
The most common theme was that people were too busy to remember and needed to be reminded to take care of their plants.
Persona
Although there are several app based solutions to these problems, they offer a complex, pay to use option. My research led me to design a solution that is straightforward and simple, yet effective and satisfying to use. To help myself focus the design on solving the challenges uncovered in research, I created the persona of a young, busy professional that loved plants but couldn't dedicate the mental space needed to care for them.
Information Architecture
Research and analysis led to the ideation of a platform with three main sections, labeled Care, Cure and Curate for alliterative effect. To help organize everything, I contemplated the process of growing plants and added a “greenhouse” section to put plants in.
These sections were designed to address the primary issues of remembering to care for plants, figuring out why a plant was sick and how to cure it, and the ability to curate plants that fit well in your home and are easy to take care of.
So these sections would be easy to find and navigate, I started by developing a solid information architecture to get a feeling for the layout of the app.
User Flows
To outline these sections in detail I created user flows to get a feel for the users journey through the app. Dividing the greenhouse up into rooms to let users designate the level of light plants would get allowed for matching plant needs to the room they were placed in. To accommodate the busy professional, Care reminders were simplified to allow the user to choose a time and day of the week where they could dedicate some time to water plants. Curing plants was as easy as choosing the affected plant, describing the malady, and following instructions. Curate gave the user the option to search based on criteria to filter results to plants that would work well for their space
Sketches
While sketching red route screens, I drew inspiration from several plant care apps that I thought did a pretty good job at creating a solution, always keeping in mind my persona of a young, busy professional who needed a solution that was straightforward and simple, yet effective and satisfying to use.
Wireframes
I scanned these sketches to create a rudimentary prototype that allowed me to conduct guerilla usability testing and gain a lot of useful feedback from users. It became clear that the focus needed to be on adding plants and setting reminders to respect the goal of being as simple and straightforward as possible. These tests illuminated where users got caught up or confused and had an impactful influence on creating wireframes and wireflows.
Hi-Fi Mockups and Prototyping
The brand platform was created by extrapolating the key values I had envisioned at the start of the project and had been my guide throughout ideation and design. Simple, straightforward yet efficient and satisfying were the cornerstones on which my greenhouse stood and were the obvious inspiration for branding plant parent. The style guide flowed from these qualities. Elements were designed to be intuitive and powerful in colors that reflected the simplicity of nature. This led to the creation of stunning, high-fidelity mockups and powerful prototypes.
Usability Testing
These mockups and prototypes allowed me to conduct in depth usability testing. I recruited users and watched as they navigated through prescribed tests through two series of five moderated usability tests. The first round of testing yielded a surprising amount of issues at crucial stages. What had seemed obvious to me, was not clear to my users,
rendering several features unusable. I found that:
Since they didnt know how to use it or find it, its was
as if it didnt exist.The curate feature was essentially unusable.
The greenhouse and care sections reported only
minor issues. This was heartening as this was the
main focus for the project.Several UI components needed retooling.
These finding led me through a rigorous reiteration process to solve several critical and major UX issues as well as some minor UI ones. After reiteration, a second round of testing with new users was conducted resulting in far fewer and much less severe issues.
What I learned
One of the key takeaway for me from this process is how cyclical UX design really is? I remember reading about it and thinking “ yeah that make sense. As you learn you make changes”. The reality of how many times feedback led to the realization of design flaws was startling to me. Even after interviews and testing led me to design what I though was a complete product, there was always room for improvement. A valuable lesson to learn on my first project and something I will take with me in my design thinking.
Next Steps
If I had more time and resources to pursue this project further, the next steps would be to remedy the reported issues in the second round of usability testing and then hand off to a developement team. I’d like to see this in the hands of actual users to test in real life how useful and effective it is at mitigating stress for plant owners.