UX / UI Case Study
My Dream Garden is an app concept desinged for the plant lover in you.
About
My Dream Garden is an app concept designed for plant enthusiast to help them develop their gardening skills and maintain healthy plants. It provides users with a personalized task and reminder system, a comprehensive plant care database and resources to help them learn more about plant care. With it users can also find new plant to add to their dream garden, whether it’s inside or outside.
Problem
Plants are in style right now but not everybody has a green thumb. Plants can be hard to take care of and people tend to forget to water them, unsure how to take care of them or even if they are suited for their garden or homelife.
Goal
The goal was to design an app that is user friendly and helps them take care of their plants in their busy lives. Providing clear tasks and reminders as well as a community to help with the care.
Design process
I followed a user-centered iterative design approach in which I had to focus on the users and their needs in every step.
Empathize
Define
Ideate
Design
Test
User research summary
I conducted three user interviews. I discovered that one user didn´t own plants because they didn´t consider themselves to have green thumbs and their previous attempts to have plants ended badly. Even the ones that owned plants didn´t know how often to water their plants, often forgot to water them or how to take care of other things like repotting or fertilizing. They also find it hard to shop for plants in stores since they rarely come with any instructions or information.
Pain points
Process too difficult in buying plants
Instructions unclear
Needing reminders for plant care
Insufficient information on plants
I created a persona representing the goals, characteristics and needs of the ideal user to better understand who I was designing for.
Persona
Name: Sara Age: 35 Occupation: teacher Status: In a relationship Location: Reykjavík
About
Sara enjoys spending time indoors and loves to decorate her space with plants. However, she struggles to keep them alive and often forgets to water them or provide them with adequate care. She is looking for a solution to helpher keep track of her plant care schedule and provide her with tips on how to care for her plants.
Goals
Keep plants alive and thriving.
Wants to improve her plant care skills.
Wants to grow her indoor garden.
Knowing when to fertilize or rehome each plant.
Pain points
Forgetting to water the plants.
Not knowing specific needs of plants.
Needing more information when buying new plants.
Wireframes
First I made paper wireframes keeping in mind the pain points about the process, access and reservations from the user research. I then made them digital to make them clearer before presenting them to study participants. Here are the first digital drafts.
Usability study
When the wireframes were complete I tested them with a in-person moderated study with two participants. The participants were given four tasks to complete while I observed how they navigated through the application.
Add a plant to their garden.
Find a task and tick it off.
Find a indoor plant in store.
Go to my basket
Findings
The users found the navigation fairly simple and easy to memorize and were happy with the design. There were a few pain points and feedback:
Too many steps to see that there are tasks to do today
Wanted to have pictures of their own plants to see the process of their plant.
Changes
Based on the usability study I made tasks part of the home page so it’s more obvious what tasks need to be completed today. I also added a feature to add your own photographs of your plants.
Mockup and prototypes
I created a mockup from the wireframes with the changes from the usability study and with accessibility in mind. I then made a high-fidelity prototype from the mockup to see how the app flowed when used.
Clear visual hierarchy with headers in different sizes
Consistent design across the app to increase learnability.
The task list is efficient and easy to use.
Keeping the design simple for better user control.
