Gardenly
Providing tailored planting guidance with personalized product recommendations.
My Role: UX Research, Product Design Duration: 4 weeks (Research - Concept)
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Team:
Aishwari V - UX Design
Dillon P - User Research
Context
Gardening is a process oriented skill which often looks simple but is rather complex. People who grow plants at home often lack the technical know-how and face problems while planting plants. Additionally, working plant parents are often busy and forget to provide timely attention to their beloved plants.
Solution
Problem
Plant parents often face challenges in determining the correct way to care for their plants. Unfortunately, by the time they realize something is a miss, it may already be too late.
An app that seamlessly guides users through every step of their planting journey. Additionally, it suggests products tailored to their specific plant and location for optimal care.
Research
But how did we reach here?
The design sprint was divided roughly into three phases discover, define and build. It started with understanding the gardening process and then scoping the user pain points into product opportunities.
Discover
Methods Used:
User Surveys, Contextual Inquiry, Competitor Study, User Personas.
Define
Methods Used:
Product Opportunity Gaps, Must Should Could, Feature Matrix
Build
Methods Used:
Information Architecture, User Flows, Low Fidelity, High Fidelity
Understanding the problem
Based on our desk research our hypotheses was "Growing plants at home involves a lot of trial an error and often needs guidance". Based on this we conducted a survey to get a better understanding of user's choices.Sample size for this survey was 161.
Findings from the interviews
While the survey helped us in getting the overview, the interviews helped user's frustration points throughout the gardening process. All of 10 interviews pointed to 4 key challenges in the home gardening process.
User personas
The information gathered through user interviews helped us formulate the key user archetypes. These archetypes were further used as a guiding light in ideation.
Defining Product Features
Keeping in mind the 4 key findings and the end users, we converted the user pain points into values and features.
Ideation
Building the solution
The ideation phase started with brainstorming and getting a high level overview of what the solution would look like.
Defining hierarchy and user flows
To translate high level ideas into tangible app screens we started with defining the structure and hierarchy of the screens. Further we delved deeper into how the user flows to understand and define user touchpoints for the screens.
Information architecture
User flows
Brainstorming layouts
By translating information architecture into low-fidelity screens, we were able to get some initial feedback about user flow from users. This set the direction for what's working and what isn't working.
Solution
The final product
Gardenly is a one stop solution for home plantation assistance. It not only guides you throughout your plant nurturing process, but also helps you in finding the best plant care products for your little sapling.
1. Homepage
The homepage section of the app is a newsfeed which provides plantation related articles and blogs.
2. My plants
This section is like a dashboard where you can see all your plants that you are growing in your home garden.
3. Adding plants
The add plant section provides user with an overview of a particular plant's growing process.
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5. Purchasing plant care products
This section helps user's with personalized plant care product recommendations. It acts as a revenue stream for 'Gardenly'. The app can also earns revenue from paid promotion of certain products for local merchants.
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Sponsored Ads: The primary revenue stream for this platform will be based on the commission earned from the featured products
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In App Purchases: Number of users actually buying products based on the app's recommendations.
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Premium Features: The platform can leverage its unique features such as ' plant disease diagnosis' and offer it at a premium to users.
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Potential revenue streams for 'Gardenly'
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User Retention Rate: The number of net annual users retained is crucial in planning the subsequent year's cash outflow and profit margins.
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Acquisition Rate: The total number of new installations provides a fair way to measure user's interest in the application. It helps in estimating the potential revenue against the cost per acquisition.
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App's Performance: The app's crash and error rate will be crucial will be measuring the reliability and stability of the platform at varied user traffic levels.
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Important metrics
Learnings and Takeaways
Learnings
I realized the significance of incorporating business and revenue considerations into feature development. Ultimately, the product serves not only users but also the broader business objectives.
I recognized the value of incorporating the user feedback during the ideation phase, as their perspectives on certain features may vary significantly.
If I have to revisit ...
I would delve deeper into exploring color contrast and its implications for accessibility. This would be coupled with some focused group user testing. Additionally, I would concentrate on crafting a market rollout strategy, ensuring smooth integration between the app ecosystem and business logistics.
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