Midori, a personal project, is a mock up plant app designed for wellness, taking care of your plants, and posting their progress through social media.
Features included in this app are a calendar that tells you when you need to water your plant, a scanner for identifying plants along with any diseases they may carry, In-depth knowledge of how to take care of plant, a plant social media feed, and educational articles on the benefits between plants and mental health.
As this was a personal project, my role in this included every design, research, and motion graphic component from start to finish. Beginning at conducting user research, to organizing that research, creating personas, defining the problem, sketching out wireframes, making prototypes, and conducting usability testing.
Two growing concerns that are taking place in heavily populated areas are the lack of green that is seen on a day to day basis, particularly in cities, and the increasing number of adults who are being diagnosed with some form of mental illness.
The research that I've conducted supports the idea that a way to alleviate both issues is to increase the number of household plants, as plants have shown a positive impact on reducing stress and increasing the ability to concentrate. However, now the problem becomes identifying the plant, knowing how to take care of the plant, and remembering/finding the motivation to take care of the plant.
Due to limited funds for this project my research began with primary and secondary sources found off of google scholar. It was important to have credible research so the articles I looked at were constrained to within the past two decades and peer reviewed science based articles.
Through my research I learned that more than one in five U.S. adults live with some form of mental illness. Furthermore, nearly half of millennials were planning on buying a new plant and around half were worried about being able to take care of said plant. Lastly, a study showed that visible greenery both indoors and outdoors increased the ability to focus as well as reduce stress.
Given this information it became apparent that the target audience for a plant health app would be large and relevant given that many U.S. adults suffer from mental health issues, many U.S. adults are looking to buy a houseplant, and many health benefits come with visible greenery on a day to day basis.
Five interviews were conducted to determine if a plant health app would be something of interest to U.S. adults ages around 21-40. I made a questionnaire that I filled out for each participant as I was conducting the interview. Common themes among the interview were that participants would in fact use a plant health app, that users did have anxiety about remembering when they last watered their plant, and that they were interested in the motivations/benefits of having a plant/plant app.
To help understand and define my users I created user personas that summarized my findings from my research.
“Our Plant App (Midori) will let users identify their plants, keep track of their plants health, and provide reminders to take care of their plants. This will affect owners of plants and/or people with mental health issues by decreasing stress levels and increasing plant health. We will measure effectiveness by analyzing plant health, health of users, and frequency of App use”
I conducted competitive audits from other plant apps such as Planta, Plant Parent, and Plantum. I downloaded the apps, reviewed forums about the apps, and read reviews to know user pain points and what users liked.
I compared what unique value the company brings, what leg up do they have over other companies, and potential drawbacks. I also made comparisons of similarities they all had, apparent differences, possible missed opportunities, and key things I've learned from this audit.
I learned that all of these apps have a plant identification feature. I also learned that the pricing of subscription varied a lot and that a lot of complaints these apps have gotten were that the subscriptions weren't transparent.
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I conducted an observational study in which I gave my participant certain tasks to complete. Throughout the interview I wrote notes of quotes or anything noteworthy as they went through my app.
From my usability testing I made adjustments to my app based on user feedback such as simplifying the design and amount of pages. Now all of the pages fit within the navigation bar. I also merged the plant article and plant feed sections so there would be less clicking and easier access. Lastly, I tested colors in WCAG to make them more accessible to a wider range of people.
"I would like it if the plant feed and plant articles were on the same page"
"I prefer apps with less clicking"
"I really like this calendar aspect, it is very easy to use"
In addition to creating a user friendly app, I created a responsive website. Here I was able to take advantage of the vast amount of space that comes with desktop websites. In addition to everything the app offered, I included a plant database, an about us page, and a app feature page.
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Some take aways I received from this project were the importance of following WCAG and how some colors that are easy for me to see, may not be easy for others to see. Another take away is that less is often times more. So after my interview with my user I made sure to reduce the number of pages and simplify the design.