A mobile application and an Hardware that work together to make sure your plants are taken care of.
UX Designer
15 Weeks
Solo
The user buys Planta and receives 6 chips. One chip for each plant.
When adding a plant the user adds chip to the plant he is scanning.
The application notify the user when his plants need watering, or are getting too much sunlight.
Finishing up her masters degree in Gas Emission. Rents a studio apartment in NY and loves to spend time outdoors. Is a multi plant parent and loves her plants do death but needs some help with keeping track with them.
If there was a world record for killing plants I would be the current holder for sure...
Someone told me that its easier to become a millionare than killing a cactus. Ive killed a cactus and well...
I could not name a single plant in my household. How am I supposed to know how to take care of them?
For my interview script I focused on three different learning goals. Why becoming a plant owner, importance for plant parents about plant care, and what their thoughts are about how they and the economy benefit form plant parenting.
Question: Is there any certain reason why you wanted to become a plant parent?
Question: IF yes, what was the main one?
Question: Are you happy that you became a plant parent?
Question: How is your schedule when it comes to watering your plant?
Question: What are your thoughts about nutrition for plants?
Question: Do you feel like there is a lack of informational database that consists all plants care?
Question: Do you know the importance of knowing your plant origin?
Question: What tools (can be paper and pen) do you use to schedule your plant care?
Question: What are your thoughts on climate change?
Question: IF yes, what was the main one?
Question: Does it matter if you buy your plant locally?
Question: If you had a magic wand (make belief) and you can have anything you want within this context or application, what would your wish be?
I took notes while I ran the interview script through with 8 of my users. This allowed me to quickly understand the frustrations my users faces as well as opportunities for my product.
I created an online quantitive research survey to get an even better insights for my focus groups. Overall about 42 people did the survey and it helped me a lot with both sorting out needs and different values that my user will have. A high percentage of the users felt that plants are only visual features for them and it helped me to start visualising the application experience and the need to have it delightful.
I noted down the most important quotes from my user interviews and structured them down in synthesis using Miro. When I was done I came up with themes & patterns for my product and card sorted the notes from the synthesis there focusing on the reason for becoming a plant parent, frustrations, and features or opportunities.
As I took together all the insights from both my quantitive research and my user interviews I was able to list down learnings from my assumptions. These learnings were really important as they gave me the end-to-end vision for my product.
To visualise the final product I sketched down possible solutions. In the end I came up with designing a hardware that would track sunlight, humidity, and vibrate to stimulate growth. From the app that connects to the hardware the user can scan the plant and as the application knows the plant it creates a watering schedule for the plant.
It was important to have it look beautiful since many of the users get plants for visual treatment. The packaging needed to be small and unique. The colors were supposed to represent the calmness that the product brings to the user as he no longer needs to stress about his plants.
Through zoom we presented our prototype to designers all around the world to gain visual and usability feedback. This helped me a lot achieving the final structure I wanted for the app. The designers commented through Figma while I shared my screen and ran through the prototype.
When a new user onboards he goes through a simple walkthrough with Planta as he adds his first plant .
Adding a new plant is pretty similar as when you go through your first onboarding.
It was important for me to design alerts that were not too alarming.
The user can view his plants and see the hydration and sunlight status of his plants. Based on card sorting the humidity was the least important.
A simple schedule feature for the user to see when he needs to water his plants.
The importance of going in depth with interviewing the users. Card sorting helped me a lot visualising the final product.
That I do not have to tackle all the problems to serve the users. Trying to focus on the highest priorities safed me a lot of time.
I learned a lot about plants, and their importance in homes as well as outdoors. In the process of doing this I added 3 plants to my apartment.
I think it would be a more globalised approach. Creating a layout for Amazon product page and looking at how IoT products are sold on there.
Something sustainable. The battery will die. I think it is interesting to look at some of the bamboo products that recharge in the sun.
Expanding to the outdoors and see how it would function in peoples yards or even in some greenhouses.
