Green Guardian User Reserach

Green Guardian

An augmented reality eCommerce mobile app specifically for indoor plant parents.

This project focuses on the User Research & Synthesis, Architecture, UX Design & Buidling Brand Aesthetics

The Proposal

Challenge

How might we advise users to visualize and design their living spaces while helping plant parents feel confident in their tending and care of indoor plants?

Key Objective

Green Guardian should enable users to select indoor plants from a catalogue and virtually curate their homes through a smartphone or tablet application. After visualizing plants in AR, users should have the capability to purchase and learn how to attend to their plants utilizing the Green Guardian app.

Solution

From research and ideation to UI and implementation, I designed Green Guardian to allow users to view a catalogue of indoor plants and place them in their homes via augmented reality. I also designed Green Guidance to optimize plant growth stages, sunlight expectations, and seasonal suggestions based on the user’s geographic location. The application was designed holistically, with branding, logo exploration and development, and marketing concerns met during the process.

Role: UX/UI Designer

Tools: Sketch, Figma, Illustrator, InVision

Timeline: 3 weeks (Nov 2023)‍

Research

Green Guardian began with ideation, market research, and competitive analysis. ‍

‍I drafted two research proposals inclusive of the need for both secondary and primary research. My professional experience of organizing battle cards, analyzing market positioning, and evaluating SWOT and competitor analysis helped form the foundation of the secondary research. In-depth in-person interviews and observational inquiry led a pathway through my primary research.

Research Goal: To develop an understanding of the indoor plant market, discover the target audience, identify the target demographic’s behaviour and journey when using plant-tending applications, and, finally, understand the successes and failures of competitor applications.

I analyzed the successes, failures, wins and opportunities of the current market.

Key Finding: Overall, there is considerable potential in the AR indoor plant conceptualization market within the sphere of eCommerce. Although, maybe the right questions haven’t been asked and not enough problems solved thus far within this growing market.

Interview Findings

I conducted interviews with participants about their experience with gardening, indoor plants and plant care. All participants were between the ages of 25 and 30 and had experience with plant-tending and purchasing.

‍"You don’t really know what you’re getting into when you’re buying a plant.” - Participant from Den Bosch

‍“Shopping in person can be overwhelming and really time consuming. I need a centralized app that has a catalog of all the plants at home and automates and alerts me when I need to care for them. I don’t want to think about it, but I don’t want them to die." - Participant from Enschede

‍“If it meets the requirements for the exact space I’m looking for on the label I’ll buy it. Houseplants are more about design.” - Participant from Deventer

Notable trends with the interviewees were:

Matching plant options to pre-existing aesthetic and interior design style

Minimal and clean interior design aesthetics with indoor plants as accents

Finding plant hobby personal and casual, and not needing to share socially

Favouring smaller plants like succulents and cacti for ease of care and cognitive load

Needs

Centralized hub and catalogue with automated alerts for plant care

Plants to dimensionally and aesthetically fit perfectly in a given living space

Ability to order plants online after visually assessing the right fit

Pains

Not having an information hub for basic information on plants

Having to “hope for the best” or “learn by failure” when it comes to plant care

Shopping in person is overwhelming and doesn’t focus on pre-existing style and aesthetic

Desires

An indoor living space that is accented aesthetically by indoor plants

Plant care and scheduling automation with regards to “learning as you go”

Feel confident and knowledgeable about purchases and plant care

Synthesis

‍Empathy Map

After analyzing the data, I synthesized the findings into manageable reference points, beginning with an empathy map. Created from interviews, secondary research and observational analysis, the empathy map helped contextualize future users' encounters with Green Guardian.

Using an empathy assists me in making demographic and psychographic decisions that affect the persona, brand and overall design.

User Persona & Story

Contextualizing the target audience's brushes with plant tending and how a potential technology could meet their needs and goals allows me to mould a palpable representational persona. A user persona is formed strictly from my research and interview quotes.

The user encounters the problem of desiring plants to decorate and care for and applies technology as a solution. Thus, allowing the ability to brainstorm, how the technology can even be employed, and how it may augment or affect a user's life journey.

Goals & Features

👤 User Goals

Have a living space and home that feels natural and inviting

Feel confident in plant care and tending

Simple learning curve to bypass barrier of entry into hobby

Know all details of buying a plant, so there’s no risk of failure

Plant care and scheduling automation

Estimate dimensions in living space

💼 Business Goals

Become an industry leader in the plant app category

Create new logo, branding and UI design to position app in market

Utilize technology to optimize plant growing for every indoor hobbyist

Sell products through external vendors

Keep product information and cataloguing up to date

Recommend plants to users

🙏 Common Goals

Have a delightful plant tending and finding experience

Stoke and develop a new plant tending hobby for users

Catalog and information of products

Order and receive new plants for living space

See plants in live AR

💻 Technical Specifications

Ability to login and sign up

Account creation and control

UI that has ability to work within AR constraints

UI that works under iOS material design

Accessible and usable to all groups

‍Product Feature Priorities

Explore Catalog that is able to filter and browse different plants and plant categories. You should be able to favorite, add to My Plants and learn more about the plant including care and conditions.
An AR feature that is able to visualize, choose plants and place them. This page has the ability to also learn more about the plants during the AR visualization, and works in the flow of purchases. This should have the ability to estimate sunlight and place multiple plants.
A My Profile Page that allows the ability to see high level involvement with plants, living spaces, recommendations and purchase history. This page should work to also navigate to in depth pages such as My Plants, My Living Spaces, Care Schedule and Notifications.
A My Plants Page that has plants categorized in Living Spaces, recommendations, the ability to learn more about each through their plant profiles and the ability to view Plant Care notifications.
A Plant Profile that has the ability to learn intricate details about individual plants, visualize in AR, purchase the plant, add to My Plants, and set up Plant Care.
A Care Schedule page that allows the set up, viewing, and details about care for purchased or added plants. This works also with push notifications and ability to integrate iCal and Google Calendar.
A Order Plant flow that is integrated into the AR Visualization, Recommended Plants, Plant Profile and works to order the plant.

Architecture

‍How Might We?

To create the physical product, I first acknowledged business aims and necessary features for user goals and then formulated a main architectural plan. The main architectural goals were developed by positing How Might We statements. These statements allow the ability to meet user needs while considering tasks and mappings of potential technology.

‍

The particularly relevant How Might We statements followed the needs of the Naman persona, with business goals considered.

How might we help first-time plant owners feel confident in their tending and care?
How might we create for users a more accessible and usable plant buying experience?
How might we help plant hobbyists visualize and design their living spaces?

User Flows & Sitemap

Regarding the established architectural goals from the "How Might We" exercise, I identified tasks and user flows that would meet our user persona's needs, desires, and goals within the context of her life journey. I then applied these flows to uncover an application sitemap to provide the most practical route to those goals. Leaving room for iteration, I designed miniature wireframes in FlowMapp to help illustrate and brainstorm some of the potential screen solutions before moving into UX Design.

This is the main task flow and user flow, but after a sitemap is created, I step through with a SiteFlow technique for each individual task.

UX Design

Interaction Design

‍After researching and analyzing design patterns that fit the information architecture, business goals, and user needs, I sketched solutions. Using rapid-prototyping and Marvel to move forward thoughts and ideas, I focused mainly on meeting the How Might We in an iterative process. Making sure I met both WCAG 2.0 and Apple Human Interface Guidelines, I from sketches to wireframing solutions and screens via Sketch and Marvel.

Wireframing low fidelity prototypes

Branding

Unveiling the essence of our brand: where colors converge to define our app's unique identity and evoke emotion

App Logo Exploration & Brand Story

Rooted in simplicity, our logo symbolizes the nurturing essence of plant care.

‍In this project, I've undertaken a comprehensive approach encompassing user research, synthesis, architectural planning, and UX design. Additionally, I've crafted a compelling brand story and developed a distinctive logo to complement the user-centric design ethos. Moving forward, the next phase will focus on showcasing the refined interfaces designed to optimize user engagement within the app.

In the forthcoming project, a seamless continuation of the preceding endeavor, I will unveil the culmination of our efforts with a focus on presenting the meticulously crafted interfaces designed to optimize user engagement and enhance overall usability within the app.

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