Rooted Plant App
👩🏻💻 Role: UX Researcher, UI/UX Designer, Scribe (Note-taker)
👤 Team members: Regina T., Hannah L., Carly C., Karla A., Rohan H., Kevin T.
🏫 Course: INF 132 Project in Human Computer Interaction
✏️ Tools: Google Drive, Figma, Miro
🗓 Duration: 2 months
Project Overview
Designing a solution in which new and interested plant owners learn about their plants and how to care for them. Our goals were to visualize an interface for users to be able to conveniently manage their plant care activities through plant care reminders, identify plants, learn about various plant information, and exploring different kinds of plants.
Project Timeline
This project was completed using the Double Diamond design process model, where we focused on determining what was the right thing to design and using that to design things right. Click on a phase to be redirected to that section's details!
Problem
70% of millennials call themselves a "plant parent"
40% of millennials plan to buy a houseplant this year
48% of those surveyed are nervous about their ability to keep plants alive at all
47% say they don’t currently own plants because they don’t know how to take care of them
67% of those who do have plants said “plant parenthood” is tougher than they expected it to be
Figure 1: Statistics* found regarding the challenges of plant care within newer group, millennials.
*Taken verbatim from the sources: Deseret Article / NY Post Article / Survey Source
For our generative design project our group brainstormed various project ideas and all agreed upon the topic of plant care. We selected this theme because we have seen lots of people pick up this new hobby amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and thought that it might be a relevant problem space to explore and definitely has an audience. From there, we had to dig into the issues people are experiencing regarding plant care and found the following statistics presented in Figure 1. With this insight, we defined our design problem statement:
How might we educate plant owners about their plants and how to care for them, in and around their home?
Discover
Competitive Analysis
To find out how and what other technological solutions are doing to address this problem, our group conducted competitive analysis to compare direct and indirect competitors involved in plant care, education, and habit tracking. Each group member was in charge of finding and researching a competitor to use for this comparison matrix. The dimensions of comparison were based on what we thought might be useful to address the problem space (such as education, reminders, and habit tracking) as well as what features could enhance our design if we implemented them (such as advice/chatting/social capabilities, journaling, and item identification). A summarized and condensed version of the competitive analysis is viewable in Figure 2. From this analysis, we saw that there wasn't a singular solution where users could identify plants, thoroughly provide plant care habit tracking capabilities, nor a source for finding detailed enough information of a plant.
Figure 2: Competitive Analysis of direct and indirect competitors regarding plant care. Dimensions compared what we liked and disliked, item identification, habit tracking, education, user personalization, and reminders.
User Interviews
In terms of user research, we decided to do user interviews to discover the perspectives of the people within this problem space. For this process, we first established a plan for what potential participant characteristics were, how we planned on recruiting them, the magnitude of interviews based on types of user, and a guide for what questions we'd like to know answers for.
This resulted in participant selection based on if that person:
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Is interested in plant ownership: don't currently have any plants but want to own in the future
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Is new to plant ownership: has owned plants for less than 1 year
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Is experienced to plant ownership: has owned plants for more than a year
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Keeps either/both indoor and outdoor plants
Each group member then conducted their own user interviews. I conducted interviews with 1 experienced plant owner and 1 interested in becoming a plant owner user. By interviewing two very different participants, in terms of their level of plant care experience, I felt like I had better insight on the varying needs the audience has in terms of what functions and information would be useful. For example, from the two I interviewed, I found that less experienced plant owners might be more motivated to know about the needs of a plant prior to taking care of it, in comparison to more experienced plant owners.
Each group member then conducted their own user interviews. I conducted interviews with 1 experienced plant owner and 1 interested in becoming a plant owner user. By interviewing two very different participants, in terms of their level of plant care experience, I felt like I had better insight on the varying needs the audience has in terms of what functions and information would be useful. For example, from the two I interviewed, I found that less experienced plant owners might be more motivated to know about the needs of a plant prior to taking care of it, in comparison to more experienced plant owners.
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[It would be] nice to be around nature and [not feel] like I’m living in a space that’s fully concrete. I would imagine that plant care would give you a fulfilling sense of responsibility; you don't have to be at a computer all day.
"
I thought that this direct quote from one of the interviews I conducted was interesting because it made me think about how plant care is synonymous to responsibility, which requires knowledge of plants and discipline to maintain, as well as how our surroundings affect us within the contexts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is likely why many have turned to plant care as a hobby.
Define
Affinity Diagram
With a total of 12 interviews conducted as a group, we reconvened after we had completed all user interviews to collect our data into an affinity diagram. Through our Miro board, we created 12 sticky notes of different colors to denote which of the 12 participants' had said what insight. After we had all of our interview notes collected onto the board, we then organized each note into 8 categories, as seen in Figure 3-11:
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Plant care looks like...
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Challenges
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Why do they enjoy plant care?
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Where to find information/research
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Ideal Tool
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Tracking/Planning
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Why Specific Types of Plants? (Aesthetics / Functionality / Ease of Care / Other)
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Indoor vs Outdoors
What users think plant care is based on interviews.
Observed plant owners challenges based on interviews.
Preference for indoor or outdoor plants based on interviews.
What users think plant care is based on interviews.
Figure 3-11: Screenshots of affinity diagram categories and their content on a Miro board.
Problem Definition
From the affinity diagram groupings, we identified problems (magenta boxes on Miro board) and generated key insights (blue boxes on Miro board). Some important key insights we synthesized based on findings from research were:
Insight
Findings
Individuals use many mediums to learn and understand how to care for their plants
90% of all interviewees indicated that online resources are their source of plant knowledge
Novice plant owners fixate their care attention on basic practices (water and sunlight)
4/5 novice plant owner interviewees described plant care as water and sunlight; "it's just a plant so it just needs water and sunlight"
Plant owners don't keep a strict schedule for plant care, but still want to be consistent.
8/10 plant owners interviewed didn't have a schedule for plant care, consistency was still listed as a goal by most interviewees
Beginners not only want a way to remember when to care for plants, they need a way.
Novice plant owner interviewees say maintaining a care schedule and building habits is difficult.
Persona
In discovering more about the needs of plant owners, we decided to narrow our audience scope to new and interested plant owners, rather than all kinds of plant owners. This is because they had similar needs that our group thought could be addressed in more tangible ways in comparison to experienced plant owners. To best represent these target users, we created a persona whose characteristics were based on research from interviews and gathered in our affinity diagraming. The persona, pictured in Figure 12, helped guide our later solution design by ensuring we addressed all user needs and goals.
Figure 12: Persona of potential user of our system, a plant app. Created by Rohan.
Storyboard
To take "walking in the shoes of our users" further, we created a storyboard to envision how a user would utilize our app. As shown in Figure 13, the user is using the app to set a reminder for plant care. By processing how users will be using the solution in a step-by-step method, we can better understand how the app would fit into user narratives and meet their needs.
Figure 13: Storyboard of how a user could use our system, a plant app. Created by Rohan.
Develop
Sketches
Based on what needs our users showed from research, we decided that we wanted to create a mobile application where users could look up plants and their information from a corpus (Encyclopedia), scan and identify plants (Plant Scanner), set and manage auto-calculated reminders for plant care based on user personalization (Reminders), and have a personalized user profile (User Profile & Onboarding). These features were divided amongst the group to sketch, where we envisioned what we wanted to build and allowed us to collaborate on the integral functional elements by giving feedback on all aspects of the app. The use of sketches were beneficial for our group in order to focus more on the structure and core functionality of the app without getting sidetracked by any specific design elements. My task was to sketch out the Reminders feature, as shown in Figure 14, where I fleshed out almost all of its functionality details.
Reminders of plant care for the type "watering."
Interaction example of how to complete a task in reminders and the animation it would do.
Modal that appears when a plant is added to the list of plants of a reminder.
Reminders of plant care for the type "watering."
Variety of plants that can be searched.
Plant categories that are displayed when "Indoor" is selected.
List of succulent plants.
Variety of plants that can be searched.
Name input field that appears during onboarding process.
Experience level selection that appears during onboarding process.
User profile depicting user activity on app, generated from onboarding information collection.
Name input field that appears during onboarding process.
Camera interface for users to scan and identify plants.
Camera capabilities of scanning are processing and identifying the plant.
Creating a new collection
Camera interface for users to scan and identify plants.
(Left to Right)
Figure 14: Sketches of reminder feature, including how users view and manage their plant care tasks, setting up a reminder type and how to add plants into them. Created by Regina.
Figure 15: Sketches of encyclopedia feature, including how users can look up various plants, search by category, and information on plants. Created by Karla.
Figure 16: Sketches of onboarding and user profile feature, including collecting information that is needed to personalize user experience and capabilities of user profile. Created by Carly.
Figure 17: Sketches of scanner feature, including how a plant is scanned, what information is displayed on the scanned plant, and adding the plant to the user's plant collections. Created by Hannah.
From these initial sketches, our group then reconvened to go over our sketches of the potential system features. Each feature author explained what they had designed, how it would flow, and how it would work. Remaining group members then critiqued, asked questions for clarification, and gave comments based on design. From there, we noted some things we would like to change for the mid-fidelity wireframes.
In addition, we discovered that we wanted to include another feature that would be useful for our target audience: an Explore page where users can search and discover plants based on categories. This was because most of our group had envisioned the Encyclopedia feature to be a long, comprehensive list of all possible plants. However based on Karla's sketches of the Encyclopedia, we saw that her approach to the feature was more based on plant discovery. Using her initial ideas, we thought this would be a great opportunity for our app to include another beneficial feature for new and interested plant owners. The Explore feature would thus include popular/trending plants and filters for search and viewing categories.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Using what we learned from our sketches, we created mid-fidelity wireframes to show basic ideas of what each feature would entail, in order to gather our ideas before moving onto a high fidelity. This allowed the group to see how these revised features would be realized, as well as giving us a clearer idea of what the system could look like. Some of these mid-fidelity wireframes are visible in Figures 18-22.
(Left to Right)
Figure 18: Mid-fidelity wireframe of Encyclopedia created by Karla.
Figure 19: Mid-fidelity wireframe of Reminders created by Regina.
Figure 20: Mid-fidelity wireframe of Scanner created by Hannah
Figure 21: Mid-fidelity wireframe of Explore created by Karla.
Figure 22: Mid-fidelity wireframe of User Profile created by Carly.
After completing feature wireframes, we reconvened as a group and gave each other feedback on the designs. We then discussed how we can better align our group designs and used these mid-fidelity wireframes as a “template” idea for high-fidelity.
Deliver
Guidelines & Component Library
In order to produce a cohesive, high-fidelity app design amongst multiple people who are working on separate parts, our team decided to first establish a set of guidelines and component library. This included an established color palette, typography, component elements, branding, icons, and illustrations, all of which are shown in Figures 23 and 24. In addition, we also decided on a name for our plant app, Rooted, where we imagine that our design and features will allow users to feel confident or "rooted" in their ability to orchestrate plant care. Since we wanted to convey an "earthy" tone to match our project topic of plant care, we used neutral and natural colors. We also wanted the overall aesthetic to be fun with cute plant and character graphics, so we created some illustrations of our own as well as others we found on the internet.
(Left) Figure 23: Illustrations, logos, icons, color palette, photo, and typography guidelines used throughout our high-fidelity designs. As labeled, logo and branding elements were created by Carly; icons and illustrations were created by Regina; photo was taken by Lauren Mancke on Unsplash; and other illustrations were created by Flaticon.
(Right) Figure 24: Component elements used throughout our high-fidelity designs. Used Figma's "components" ability to maintain consistency.
High-Fidelity Wireframes
Using these guidelines and mid-fidelity wireframes as our basis, our group produced high-fidelity wireframes for each of the features, including important subsequent pages and functions that feature supports. The following are some of the high-fidelity wireframes produced:
After the completion of all the high-fidelity wireframes, we evaluated and gave feedback on each of the feature designs. Using the suggested critiques, we adjusted our wireframes again so that our interactive prototype could reflect our group's best work before evaluation.
High-Fidelity Interactive Prototype
In order to see how well our designs would translate into a real, functional system, our team created an interactive prototype out of our high-fidelity wireframes. Using Figma's prototype feature, we created a prototype that users can click and engage with in order to better showcase what our team imagines this app to become if implemented. The following showcases a full-walkthrough of the prototype:
User Testing
Through our prototype, we are able to showcase almost full user flows for each feature. With this ability, our group then conducted user testing in order to see if our design had addressed "designing things right" in accordance to the Double Diamond process model. We created a plan for how we were going to go about user testing with our prototype. This included a list of objectives and ways of measuring or qualifying whether or not those objectives were achieved, as well as a task list that encompassed the use of all our features created. Then, each group member conducted their individual user testing with someone from our target audience, either interested or a new plant owner. I conducted evaluation with an interested in becoming a plant owner participant.
Based on the objectives, user rating (the users' satisfaction of our design solution to achieve the tasks and ease of navigation/usability) and effectiveness (the ability to use the app to learn more and if they feel better prepared to perform plant care activities) success are as follows:
User Rating
Calculated average of feature rating (Σ all participant ratings/Σ all participants) is greater than or equal to 7
Effectiveness
Calculated average of overall user experience (Σ all participant ratings/Σ all participants) is greater than or equal to 7
70% of users who were asked, ”If you had this app tool, would you feel better prepared to perform plant care activities?,” responded with “Yes”
The results, shown graphically in Figure 25 for user rating and Figure 26 for effectiveness, indicated that most users were satisfied by the solution feature and thought it was useful. However, the calculated number of clicks to complete some tasks indicate that some were harder to complete than expected. This means that our design solution, though adequate, can still use some improvement! In addition, the results from asking users if they felt better prepared to perform plant care activities yielded 100% "Yes," but is not comprehensive enough since only 3 of the 5 participants were asked this question (we had thought to ask this question later on in the process).
Solution
Since the school term was nearing its end, this project concluded at the high-fidelity prototype evaluation. However, I took it upon myself to collect all participant evaluation results and saw through this analysis that there were still opportunities for this design to improve.
Although the reminders feature had received a successful user rating in terms of our objectives, the click-through count and signs of frustrations observed during this task could be improved by: clearer indications of how to create a reminder by changing the "Edit Reminders" button to say "Reminders," to show that you can edit and create reminders from that flow.
In addition, the filters task on the Explore feature that our users indicated they were dissatisfied with could be improved by: placing the filters overlay module to take up less vertical space of the screen such that users can see their selection changes being made in real time OR to have an "apply (X)" button that users must click to apply the filter options selected, rather than assuming the changes are made when they close out the module.
If there was more time, I'd like to not only make those changes, but also include a more complete user flow of the functionalities of the User Profile feature so that we can show the "plant care tips" and "plant collections" made.
Takeaways
Working on this generative project from thinking about a problem and researching it, to coming up with solution ideas and executing them within a group has been a very useful experience for me to not only practice my design skills, but also in determining what kind of team-player I am.
Through this project, I learned more about what my strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to design. My strengths shined particularly when we entered the second Diamond where we developed and delivered more visual-centric design to communicate ideas. I think this is because my background in graphic design hasn't always prodded into "why's" but more so on tangible deliverables. However, I can still improve my skills in design by addressing my weaknesses, such as the defining the root problems of the space, which we did through affinity diagram groupings. By being in a group and not being self-reliant, I saw the different ways in which my team members were thinking about what overlaps between our interview participants had said. This was really helpful for me because I came into affinity diagramming with a preconceived idea of what our solution could be, but the results had prompted me to think about different ways in which we can design.
This class was conducted remotely over Zoom, so I have never seen my peers with whom I had worked with for two months and had not known them prior either. At first, I felt really nervous to interact with my group members because a lot of them had professional or extracurricular experience, whereas I have only been practicing UX design by myself. To combat this, I put faith in myself that "I have just as much qualifications to design as my peers do," since this is a course project after all. I think that helped me overcome the imposter syndrome and led me to become really passionate about this project, especially since the topic was on plant care, an activity I also do in my free time.
In terms of my work ethic in relation to the team throughout the course, I feel as though I put in 100% of my possible efforts into creating this project. I believe that throughout the course of the project, I was able to maintain a positive mindset, communicate effectively towards my team members, work together and independently, and support my team members to complete tasks on time. In particular within this project team, I appreciated how we were able to facilitate problem-solving and ideas freely and respectfully under a group setting. I would say that this is a very rare occurrence to have in STEM subjects where there is evident gender disparity and oftentimes in the past, my ideas were shut down in the past. However, our group was able to follow a practice in which we 1) listened to each others' ideas prior to responding, 2) encouraged everyone to give their opinion or idea on something, and 3) considered all ideas before shutting down the possibility of what could be. I also liked how this group setting challenged me to see beyond my own ideas and acknowledge the perspectives of others' ideas.