Focus

A Lifestyle App: A Plant Care and Community App
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I came to this idea when I was looking at my mother's houseplants and remembered how she felt she wanted to take care of plants for so long, but beginning and learning how seemed overwhelming and confusing
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I imagined an app that could help users keep track of their plants, get notice on how to take care of them, and even a way to find community with fellow plant parents

Secondary Research

I began my secondary research before I settled on my focus: a Plant Care App
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During this time, I looked into various ideas I had including:
   - Budgeting
   - Plant Care
   - A Foodie app, etc

I decided that though there were a number of plant care apps, there was room for improvement and that a plant care app best fit the scope of this project

Competitive Analysis

I determined four of the most popular plant care apps and noted their slogan, strengths, weaknesses, notable features, and features they are missing as well as the logos and sample of the UI as shown above

Plant Care Survey

A survey for beginner and seasoned plant parents as well as people who are simply interested in taking care of plants
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16 Respondents
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Non-graphable questions I inquired:
   - “What made you want to take care of plants? If you don't, what makes you not want to take care of plants?”
   - “How did you learn to take care of your plants? If you haven't, how would you anticipate learning?”
   - Explaining the rating of how Difficult-Easy it is “Finding a new plant”
   - Explaining the rating of how Confusing-Straightforward it is “Learning to take care of plants”

Above are the statistics of how people defined themselves at the start of the survey

Respondents rated the task of finding the right plant an average of 3.2 (1 being difficult, 5 being easy)

Respondents rated the process of learning to take care of plants an average of 2.4 (1 being confusing, 5 being straightforward)

The first four options were offered to respondents to select if they were interested, and the fifth was a suggestion made by a respondent

Personas

- I always like to create a persona to remind myself
of the real person behind the screen using the design
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- One of my friends has dyslexia, and to make sure I
‍kept accessibility in mind, I noted this here since other apps seemed overly wordy
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- Personas also help define the needs and pain points actual users may have regarding app usage
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- This persona was directly created from survey responses (non-quoted points as well)

Storyboard

Storyboards help define the main problem I am solving and center the project
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It also helps explore how the design would actually solve this problem considering UX

Research and Define Debrief

Once I wrap up my Research and Define phases, I take the time to recenter myself with the goal, focus, and scope of the project
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On this same doc, I will add the following items to prepare for mapping out and designing the solution:
   - Main Research Findings
   - Tools that I may need for this project, such as
      - Plugins
      - User Goals
      - Business Goals
      - Technical Constraints
      - How Might We’s

The Problem I'm Solving

It boils down to this: taking care of plants can be difficult. Whether you're a complete beginner who's never dreamed of having a green thumb, someone who likes having plants, but is forgetful or busy, or even a seasoned veteran who loves taking care of many plants, but has a bit too much on their plate to keep track of it all, knowing what plant to buy, when to water, how much to water, where to put the plant, how much sun it needs, and much much more can be hard to always be on top of. Folks also wish there was a way to connect with other plant parents.

So how might we help set all kinds of plant parents up for success while providing them access to a plant-loving community?

Feature List

- Since this capstone was quite broad, a feature list to outline the app’s capacity was necessary
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- Features brainstormed were categorized into four priority sections:
      - Must have
      - Nice to have
      - Surprising and delightful
      - Can come later

App Map

Next, I mapped out the navigation of the app by breaking down pages and features into different levels of navigation

Task Flows (First Iteration)

Initially, the task flows that I listed out to include in my prototype for the MVP were a bit too simple and my mentor thought I could show more by making a few of them slightly more complex, so…

Task Flows (Second Iteration)

I did! Specifically, I added an additional on-boarding survey to the sign up, a chance to add plant details when adding a plant, searching for a topic rather than just selecting one already on the page, and finally a “Check Up” form for your plant if it’s not looking healthy and a reminder to turn on notifications.

Lo-Fi Wireframes

Mid-Fi Wireframes

Brand Style Tile

Watering Can logo; Saku/さく/咲く = “to bloom”
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Unlike other overwhelmingly green plant apps, I went for a modern, neutral aesthetic that would let the plants shine and a tertiary, functional color inspired by the ever popular matcha latte
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I felt these concepts would really speak to the big plant parent generations: Gen Z and Millennials

UI Component Library

With the new color palette, type, and logo, I put together essential components in the brand style
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With these, I took the design from Mid-fi to…

Hi-Fi Wireframes

First Prototype

Because this prototype had multiple separate flows for testers to click through, I added an additional starting screen to each flow with a pop up with task instructions and any necessary, additional information to fulfill the task
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This helped immensely during group crit testing when I could not facilitate each person’s progress

View Prototype

Individual Testing

2 Individual Testers
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Tested all four task flows and filled out a heuristics form
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Overall, the tests went really smooth with both testers with just a few small things to edit for the next iterations

Group Critique

8 other students in Designlab’s UX Academy to test my prototype and share strengths and critiques of my design, questions, and ideas
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One really valuable piece of critique I got from a student was to include items like iPhone Status Bar and the bottom menu bar to make the prototype look exactly as it would on the phone
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Adding these elements also influenced my sizing and placement of the navigation bar and decision to remove the logo from the top bar for the best UX

Analysis

I compiled my notes from every prototype test I had: with individual testers, the group crit, and my mentor
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Feedback was sorted into four different categories:
      - Strengths
      - Changes
      - Questions
      - Ideas

Reiterated Prototype

Most impactful change: adding the iPhone status and bottom bars to the prototype which influenced the placement of the bottom nav
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Other edits included a minor diction edits, progress bar correction, and the icon change for the Add Post button at the bottom to be less similar to Add Plant
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On the schedule screen in general nav flow, I also added a “Add Task” button for tasks users may want to add themselves and showed what happens when the user clicks “See Completed”

View Reiterated Prototype

Links to Each Flow in the Prototype

Task 1:
Sign Up

Task 2:
Search

Task 3:
Add a Plant

Task 4:
Check up Form + Notify

General Nav

Reflection and Next Steps

This project was incredibly fun: It reminded me of my first full app project, Root-ine, but I felt much more confident and adventurous, which    allowed me to keep a more open mind, build a stronger brand and UI, and create more, complex flows
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If the project continued, I would…
      - Create the flows for other features I brainstormed
      - Particularly the social features like posting, browsing the explore feature further, and looking through the profile section
      - Finish out the flows for all buttons made on the various screens

Aya J Kitajima

Saku Plant Care and Community App

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