PLANTIE

Introducing Plantie, the ultimate plant care app designed to make plant parenting a breeze! With Plantie by your side, you'll never forget to water your beloved leafy friends or wonder how to keep them thriving and happy.

My Role: UX/UI Designer
Timeline: 2 weeks
Year: 2022

 

Overview

PROBLEM

Plant owners struggle with identifying their plants accurately and providing optimal care due to a lack of knowledge and forgetfulness. Existing solutions fail to offer a seamless and user-friendly experience that combines plant identification, personalized care guides, and timely reminders. This creates a need for a comprehensive plant care app like Plantie, which aims to address these challenges and empower users to nurture their plants with ease and confidence.

SOLUTION

Plantie is a user-friendly plant care app that solves these issues by providing plant identification features, sending timely reminders for plant care tasks, and offering comprehensive care guides. By seamlessly integrating these functionalities, Pantrie empowers users to confidently care for their plants, enhancing their plant parenting experience and fostering healthy, thriving green spaces.

  • 1) Research

    → Literature Review

    → Competitive Analysis

    → User Interviews

    → Affinity Mapping

  • 2) Design

    → Information Architecture

    → Sitemap

    → Task Flows

    → Wireframe

    → Interactive Prototype

  • 3) Evaluate

    → Usability Testing

    → Iterations

Research

Goals

  • Understand the challenges and pain points faced by plant owners in their plant care routines.

  • Identify the factors that hinder plant owners from maintaining a consistent care routine.

To start my research, I focused on understanding the main problem: the difficulties plant owners face in caring for their plants effectively. This involved identifying challenges in plant identification, care guidance, and maintaining a consistent care routine.

I explored different plant care resources like apps, websites, and forums, gathering insights from user feedback and discussions on platforms like Reddit. I also analyzed other plant care apps to understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Based on the information gathered, I created provisional user personas to better understand the target audience and their specific needs and frustrations in plant care.
This research guided the development of Plantie as a comprehensive solution to address the identified challenges and provide an improved plant care experience for users.

Survey & Interview Results

To gain valuable insights into the world of plant care and understand the specific challenges faced by plant owners, I conducted in-depth interviews with five participants. These interviews aimed to uncover their everyday plant care practices, struggles, and individual perspectives on nurturing and maintaining their plants. By engaging directly with plant owners, I was able to gather firsthand accounts that provided a deeper understanding of their needs and pain points, thus informing the development of Plantie.

Interview Results:

  • Lack of plant care knowledge: Participants expressed a lack of knowledge in properly caring for their plants.

  • Forgetfulness in plant care routines: Participants frequently forgot to take care of their plants on a regular basis.

  • Uncertainty in plant care methods: Participants expressed confusion about the exact care requirements for their plants.

  • Difficulty in plant identification: Participants struggled to identify the plants they owned, especially those received as gifts.

  • Desire for plant growth: Participants expressed a strong desire to see their plants thrive but lacked a systematic approach to stay on top of their care.

Survey Results

  • 78%

    of participants expressed difficulty in accurately identifying their plants

  • 92%

    of respondents mentionned struggling to maintain a consistent care routine for their plants

  • 85%

    of participants expressed a desire for reminders or notifications to help them remember plant care tasks

  • 85%

    of participants expressed a desire for reminders or notifications to help them remember plant care tasks

Define

Based on the research findings and insights obtained from the interviews, I developed user personas to better understand the target audience. These personas served as a guiding framework throughout the creation of Plantie, ensuring that their pain points and goals were kept in mind.

Now it was time important to define how a user will interact with the app. Key considerations included identifying important screens, deciding on tab bar contents, and organizing information effectively.

Task Flows

Sitemap

Mid-Fidelity Screens:

Design

In the design phase of Plantie, deliberate choices were made to create a visually appealing and user-friendly experience. The app features a soothing color palette of greens to reflect its plant-centric nature and evoke a sense of calmness. The design follows a minimalistic approach, keeping the interface clean and clutter-free for intuitive navigation. The SF Pro font was selected for its simplicity and readability, ensuring a seamless user experience. These design elements work together to create a refreshing and user-friendly aesthetic for Plantie. View clickable prototype

Final Screens

Usability Testing

In the next phase of the case study, I proceeded to prototype the designs and conducted usability testing sessions with 5 participants via Zoom. Participants were given specific tasks, including onboarding, adding plants to their collection, and completing tasks in the app. They were instructed to think aloud, sharing their thoughts and feedback during the process. Overall, users expressed satisfaction with the app's usability and found it easy to navigate.

One notable feedback received was regarding the "How committed are you to plant care" question, where participants expressed confusion about the commitment levels. To address this, I added specific time frames next to each commitment option, providing users with a clearer understanding of the expected level of care.

Another feedback point related to the beginner level icon, which was perceived as unfriendly. In response, I replaced the sad face emoji with a thumbs up icon to create a more positive and welcoming impression.

Next Steps

Due to time constraints, additional rounds of usability testing could not be conducted. However, as part of the next steps, I plan to gather further feedback and continuously improve the app's design. This iterative process will ensure that Plantie meets the evolving needs and preferences of users, enhancing the overall user experience.