Gardenio
My Role
UX Designer — User Research, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Prototyping
Project Type
Individual School Project
Timeline
2 months
Project Overview
In the Rapid Prototyping class, we worked with an Austin-based start-up, Gardenio, to help proposed design solutions to help improve the current app experience.
My research led me to discover that beginners often lack a sense of command in the gardening process. To solve the problems, I developed features such as personalized care schedules and guidelines to offer a more personalized experience, promoting education and user interaction. Additionally, I included a community feature to connect users with individuals who share similar interests and foster social encouragement.
Background
Gardenio believes that there's no such thing as a black thumb, just lack of access. It sends its customers everything they need to grow food with an app which is designed to support its customers who are new to growing food across their growing journey. It aims to connect its customers to the information, supplies, and people who can help them succeed. However, the current design falls short due to its insufficient care guide information and unengaging design. The founder seeks to revamp the app to attract more users.
Here are the requests from Gardenio's founder:
Redesign the app to improve people's growing experience and attract more new users.
Consider creating a community as a potential method to drive user growth, although it's not a mandatory direction to follow.
Research Insights
The current app served more like a dictionary when an issue arise, rather than a platform fostering observation and active learning behaviors.
To better understand the problems of the app and acquire basic background knowledge of growing plants, I did the literature review and the app review.
I found that though Gardenio tried to provide all information a novice grower may need to help them succeed, it neglected that an essential skill — observation is needed for the novice to succeed. Cultivating plant observation skills help the novices learn to recognize the health plant appearance, notice unusual symptoms and its patterns and deal with potential causes. However, the app fails to motivate and engage the novices to observe, to learn, and to try through their growing journey. What's more, its text-heavy design and uninformative care guides make learning less intriguing to users.
Novices lack the sense of control while growing plants
I also did an interview with a friend of mine who is new to growing food to learn about what difficulties a novice will have along growing. I found that as a novice with limited knowledge, it makes them more difficult to identify the real plant problems and choose the appropriate solutions. Also, the great amount of information and its complexity also make the novice more anxious and overwhelmed. Such uncertainties and the feel of out of control make them more easily to give up on gardening.
Competitive Analysis
Identify the opportunities
From the competitive analysis, I also found that though most competitors used various ways to empower their customers before and after purchasing, their service could not promptly facilitate the customers to deal with their plant issues with better guidance. Also, many of them have held the events and published articles related to cooking, green consumerism, or mindfulness. It reflects that people are also interested in other related topics and may expect gardening bringing them some positive feedbacks to their daily life.
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How might we increase users' sense of control over growing plants and engage them in growing along the way?
Proposed Solutions
Scaffolding — an adjustable and personalized guidance to facilitate learning and growing
After exploring the ideas, I decided to create a 'scaffolding' experience in which users can omit the care guides when they become sophisticated. The app supports users to learn the new skills and knowledge along growing by tailored guidance, which they can access whenever they want. Users can also adjust the care plans that would give them more sense of control of growing food.
Core FEature 1
Customize care plans based on the information given by users
By asking users the growing environment of their plants, it can help the system predict the growth patterns of the plants. Also, it also enables the app to provide users with better and reliable suggestions to take care of their plants. Moreover, it helps the product gain trust from customers.
Core Feature 2
Provide access to flexible and tailored care guides
Users are able to know what tasks need to be done every day through To-do, which is recommended by the app according to plant development. By tapping the card, users can also check the details of the task. The To-do is editable that users can change the time, snooze, or delete the task based on their needs. These features support users to gradually internalize their skills and knowledge and then develop their own strategies for growing plants.
core feature 3
Encourage users to observe plants through the Journal
In addition to adding images and notes in the Journal, users are also encouraged to observe and log the growth of the plant to improve the care guides recommendation.
core feature 4
Using AI technology to help users identify plant diseases
Identifying plant diseases is one of the most difficult tasks for novices. I decided to utilize AI technology to help users to recognize the plant diseases. I included the percentage of accuracy to help users identify which disease is the one that their plant may have to that they can feel more in control instead of overwhelmed by several possible results.
core feature 5
A community enables users to connect with people who share the same love of their interests
Based on the competitive analysis, I found that people expect growing food could bring them positive effects on their daily lives. Thus, I utilized community to help users enlist social support which encourages them to keep growing food. Considering it is difficult to have users actively participate in the community, I include the discussion and poll posts initiated by admin to foster engagement.
Reflections
What if this
The progress of the project was looking good and the achievement was well-recognized at the 2023 Q2 QBR meeting. The project successfully shed the lights on the scalability of xHIS, as well as the capability to accommodate 3rd-party developers building for our platforms.
However, the organization's goals shifted, and AICS decided to reallocate resources to another project. As a result, the xHIS Lite team was disbanded in May 2023, and the project was put on hold.
© 2024 Angie Wang