Plantopia
Role
UX/UI designer
Duration
March - May, 2024
Team
Context
I designed an app that helps people better take care of their house plants. I led the project from research to final design. The project is a coursework for Google UX Design Certificate.
Problem
>20% of house plant growers struggle to keep their plants healthy or alive. They rely on plant care advice from search engine results which are overwhelming and generic. This makes them frustrated and lose confidence in their ability to care for plants.
Solution
A plant care app that provides:
Quick identification of plants
Easy-to-follow care guide
Plant health report specific to users' situation
Impact
Created a prototype with 100% success rates to identify, find care guide for and diagnose house plants
Read ahead for my design process.
I conducted semi-scripted interviews with 9 house plant hobbyists to understand their experience caring for house plants, especially their pain points when diagnosing sick plants.
I mapped out the user journey and identified improvement opportunities at each step.
For example, in step 3: choose treatment for sick plant, users feel overwhelmed by the number of treatment options. This is an improvement opportunity to help users reduce information overload by providing metrics about different options.
Our competitors converge on similar features such as photo identification and questionnaire diagnosis. There are a few missed opportunities that our competition has not addressed.
Ideate
The information architecture is structured according to 4 user goals identified in the user research:
Identify the plant
Care for the plant
Diagnose a problem & find a treatment
Learn about plants
User flows
Take photo
Submit answer
Wireframes
User testing
I tested the usability of the user flows in an unmoderated usability test with 6 participants.
Usability testing key findings
Most users get stuck when app identify a plant wrong
Most users need additional information about different treatment options to decide their next action
Half of the users were unclear which treatment treats which problem
KPIs: Success rates & error rates on 3 user flows
The qualitative data consists of participants’ “think-out-loud” responses while interacting with the wireframes. I used an affinity diagram to organise themes and identify patterns.
Affinity diagram
Iterations
Iterations based on testing
Allow users to re-identify a plant when app identify a plant wrong
Provide metrics such as ease, effectiveness for treatment recommendations
Specify targeted problem in the treatment plan
Iterations based on HCI literature
Explain AI diagnosis in terms of cause of the problem
Iterations based on designer feedback
Reduce visual complexity
Equal size = equal importance
Minimise the number of clicks required
Brand design
Plantopia represents a lifestyle signified by connections with nature and caring for others. I composed a colour palette and a logo that are reminiscent of the natural elements.
Colour palette: grounded in nature
Espresso
Sunset
Forest
Final design
Hand-off document: design system and prototypes
Next steps
Achieve 0% error rates and test new iterations
Explore shop link feature, an low-priority improvement opportunity identified in the user testing
Build "learn" user flow to address the 4th user need to learn about plants
Learnings
Process of iteration
My design will never be perfect. It is important to know when it is good enough to move on.
Importance of feedback
Feedback from other designers offered fresh insights, helping me avoid unnecessary trial and error and saving me time.