The COVID-19 Pandemic left young adults feeling secluded, stressed, and unmotivated, which consequently led to a decline in mental health. One trend that took off during the pandemic was indoor gardening. Taking care of plants provided a structure and routine that made many young adults feel happier. Since the pandemic this trend has continued as more young adults are buying indoor plants, but many are new to the practice; there is concern on remembering when to water their plants and keeping them alive.
Midori is a plant social media app designed for plant lovers to helps them remember when to water their plants, identify their plants, educate them on the qualities of their plant, and share their plant with friends, family, and plant enthusiast.
By combining the attention grabbing qualities of social media with customizable water reminders, a water calendar that shows optimal times to water, and unique plant profiles, plant lovers will be able to keep their plants alive and happy.
Midori will:
Remind users to take care of plants
Educate users on the qualities of their plants
Allow plant growers to connect through social media
Measured by:
Frequency of plants getting watered when they should
How informed users are about their plants
How many times a user posts, messages, or interacts with a social media post
Constraints included:
Limited budget
Lack of collaborative support
3 weeks to finish school project
Midori is a school project done independently taken from 0 to 1. My role included every UX research, design, and motion graphic component. Beginning at conducting user research, organizing that research, creating personas, defining the problem, sketching out wireframes, making prototypes, and conducting usability testing.
The research conducted for Midori included secondary resources from google scholar, user interviews, personas, a competitive audit, a white board challenge, and usability testing.
Key insights:
Users felt anxiety over remembering if they watered their plants
Users worried about their plant health
According to a poll done by OnePoll around 40% of millennials were planning on buying a new plant
OnePoll found that 70% of millenials polled are plant owners
There is increased interest in plant ownership due to social media posts from TikTok and Instagram
Plants have a positive impact on reducing stress and increasing concentration
Five interviews were conducted to determine if a plant social media app would be something of interest to U.S. adults ages 21-35. I made a qualitative interview script that I loosely follow to allow room for follow up questions. Common themes in the interviews were that participants would in fact use a plant social media app. One interviewee stated that they always use social media so using a plant social media app would remind them to water their plants since they would already be on the app.
Another insight was that users did have anxiety about remembering when they last watered their plant. For some it was hard to keep track of each plant's specific water needs. Furthermore, they were interested in additional information on their plants because most stores don't provide the needs their plant requires.
Lastly, interviewees stated that they were interested in the mental health benefits associated with having plants. One interviewee stated that they felt happy looking at their plant because it brought a nice aesthetic to the room and in addition they felt a sense of accomplishment succeeding in growing a plant.
To help understand and define my users I created user personas that summarized my findings from my research.
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 insights I've learned from this audit.
I learned that all of these apps have a plant identification feature users enjoy when it's functional, 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. If I wanted to create an effective app it would need to be transparent, functional, and cost efficient. I also saw an opportunity for social media to be utilized because none of these apps had a feature for it.
Once I conducted my research I wanted to bring it all together and organize it. Like bringing the jigsaw puzzle pieces together I wanted to find connections within the secondary research, interviews, and competitive audit. I performed a white board challenge to define the problem and create the user flow that would aid me in creating my wireframes for Midori.
I started with sketched wireframes so I could iterate through dozens of different designs quickly and effectively.
From my competitive analysis many users on other platforms enjoyed the plant scanner feature and notifications to remind them to water their plants. I decided that a calendar with notifications would help users to remember to water their plants, in addition to having the ability to plan ahead for future watering.
Furthermore, it was important to my users interviewed that they had access to additional information in regards to their plants because stores didn't provide information on data such as, light intensity, soil type, and fertilizers to use. I made sure to incorporate a simple "about page" for their plants with the option to select a more thorough information page to accommodate their needs.
In my mockups I focused on intuitive design and functionality. To achieve this it was most important to have a navigation bottom bar that brought the user directly to the key aspects of the app. My research through interviews and secondary research noted the importance in a plant identifier scanner, a water reminder notification, and social feed. From this information I created the scanner button, water button, home button (for social feed), and profile button.
I conducted a usability test in which I gave my participant certain tasks to complete such as finding where you can find more information on your plant or where to get access to the water calendar.
Key Insights:
I created digital wireframes because there were many elements that would be copy and pasted such as the posts, photos, and text. When creating my user flow and wire frames I made sure to account for what one of my users had stated about preferring a social media layout that they were familiar with. I decided that a layout inspired by apps such as Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin would make navigating easier on the user.
Other changes I made to the layout based on usability testing included removing the "past posts" on the plant profile page, removing one of the login pages to reduce clicking, and putting all posts, plants, and liked posts all on the profile hero page to prevent needing to scroll.
For my final designs my goals included changes based on user concerns, functionality of main app aspects, accessibility, and overall aesthetic.
I changed the primary color used to a darker green because one user had difficulty seeing the color on the white background. I provided more instructions for the water calendar as well as more plant variety to reduce user confusion on the functions of the calendar. In addition, I removed the second calendar to simplify the design and make room for instructions. Throughout the entire design I adjusted alignment and text size to better reflect a layout familiar to users. Lastly, I removed unnecessary pages and scrolling to lower the amount of clicking required to navigate through the app.
In addition to creating an app I designed a responsive website to go along with it. Here I was able to take advantage of the extra space provided and include features such as a plant database, about us page, app feature page. Given the extra space I decided to incorporate notification reminders on the social media page and home page so that the user is reminded while they scroll their feed.
After final designs were created I revisited users that were previously interviewed with an informal interview. 100% of users reported improvements in Midori's functionality, accessibility, and aesthetic. Two notable changes that users appreciated were the instructions given on the calendar page and the changed social media layout. All users interviewed stated that they would use this app.
Importance of WCAG
The mockup app had colors that I could see, but the users I interviewed struggled to see. Going forward using WCAG color contrast tests will insure AAA standards are met.
Less is more
Users I interviewed preferred a simpler layout with less clicking required. Less in this case provided better functionality.
Designers understand affordances
It was easy for me, the designer, to understand the functions that came with the water calendar, however it was apparent that users tested experienced confusion. For complex designs providing instructions for users is critical.
Further usability testing for website
Given time constraints, I never got the chance to interview users on the Midori website. Future testing of the website would inform accessibility and functional issues.
Development
I would like this app to be coded and put on iOS for the purpose of expanding on user research.
Exploring AI
The plant scanner needs to utilize AI to identify the plant being scanned. It's crucial to understand the limitations that AI has in this regard considering it is such a large component of the app.
