UX Design Garden Guru App
UX Design Garden Guru App
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Garden Guru is a mobile app that helps home gardeners. It was designed for both beginners as well as experienced gardeners so they can care for their plants, troubleshoot issues, and access tailored growing tips.
My role spanned research, ideation, design, testing, and iteration using Figma, Google Slides, and hand-drawn sketching tools.
Project Overview
Project Overview
Garden Guru is a concept for a mobile app that supports home gardeners with personalized plant care guidance. The goal was to design an intuitive and easy to navigate tool that helps users track their plants, troubleshoot problems, and receive tips tailored to their needs. I led the full design process from initial research to final testing and iteration, always focused on usability, clarity, and user empowerment.
Just like a trowel or hand rake, Garden Guru was made to be a key tool in every gardener’s kit - simple and reliable for daily use.
User Research & Insights
User Research & Insights
To better understand the needs of home gardeners, I conducted user interviews and created detailed personas representing a range of experience levels - from curious beginners to seasoned growers. I also mapped out user journeys to identify where frustrations commonly occurred during the planting and care process.
An affinity diagram helped uncover key patterns, including difficulties with tracking plant needs, uncertainty about when to take action, and a desire for simple, centralized guidance. These insights guided every step of the design process, ensuring the app focused on real user pain points rather than assumptions.
To guide the design process, I developed two detailed personas: Cecily Thornton, a busy college student with limited resources and gardening experience, and Dr. Riley Wilder, a healthcare professional looking to support his patients through therapeutic gardening. Cecily’s challenges centered on keeping plants alive in her small space and understanding what she was doing wrong, while Riley needed quick, reliable answers to support both his own plants and the advice he gave patients. These personas helped shape the app’s features by highlighting a shared need for simple guidance, fast troubleshooting, and clear, supportive information.
Problem Definition
Problem Definition
Many home gardeners, especially beginners, feel overwhelmed when trying to care for their plants. They often struggle to remember care routines, diagnose issues, and find reliable guidance suited to their specific environment and experience level.
🌱 "Sometimes I forget what I planted where, and when I’m supposed to water or fertilize." — Morgan, interview participant
These gaps in confidence and clarity can lead to plant loss, frustration, disengagement, and even cause users to give up on gardening altogether. How might we help home gardeners feel more capable and organized in caring for their plants by providing tailored, easy-to-access guidance?
To better understand the user experience, I created journey maps for both Cecily and Riley. These maps outlined the steps each user would take to diagnose and solve plant issues, along with their emotional responses and pain points at each stage. Cecily’s map, shown here, highlights the confusion and hesitation beginners often feel - especially when app guidance is vague or time-consuming to navigate. These insights shaped design decisions like simplifying navigation, using clear language, and offering actionable next steps to build confidence.
Ideation & Planning
Ideation & Planning
To translate research insights into actionable solutions, I began sketching early concepts that reflected user goals and pain points. I used quick paper wireframes to explore layout ideas, prioritize content, and test feature groupings.
From there, I refined my sketches into low-fidelity digital wireframes, focusing on clarity, simplicity, and functionality. These early iterations helped visualize key workflows and provided a foundation for the first interactive prototype.
This planning phase ensured that design decisions were rooted in user needs and aligned with the project’s goal of supporting home gardeners with clear, accessible information.
These initial hand-drawn wireframes helped explore layout options and content hierarchy before moving into digital tools. They allowed for fast iteration and quick visual brainstorming based on early user insights.
This storyboard visualizes a typical user scenario: diagnosing and solving a plant issue using the app. It highlights Ava’s journey from frustration to success, reinforcing the emotional and practical goals behind the design. Mapping this story early on helped clarify the core features needed to support users through similar challenges.
Wireframes & Prototypes
Wireframes & Prototypes
Change
These early wireframes explored layout and function, using annotations to highlight how each screen would support intuitive plant care navigation.
I created a low-fidelity prototype to map out key user flows and tested it through in-person, moderated usability sessions. Observing real users interact with the wireframes helped me identify navigation issues early and gather valuable feedback on layout, clarity, and task completion. Their questions and behaviors directly shaped later design decisions and feature adjustments.
Testing & Iteration
Testing & Iteration
Usability testing revealed that the original section titles were unclear and contributed to navigation issues. To improve clarity, I renamed key sections using more intuitive language and adjusted their functionality to better align with user expectations. These updates made the app easier to navigate and helped users find content faster
Reflection
Reflection
This project reinforced how small design choices - like clear labels and intuitive grouping - can significantly impact user experience. It also strengthened my ability to iterate based on feedback and balance user needs with business goals. I would love to continue evolving this app with more advanced personalization features in future versions.
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