Greener is a startup that wants to work on apartment’s plants. As a startup in new space, decisions could be informed around the market. To prioritise decisions, this project was started with market and user research then continued with muck ups, prototypes and iterations based on user research.
Develop an online houseplant shop business with overcome customers’ pain points and have competitive values.
/ Time-consuming research for suitable tools.
/ Need for convenient and prompt plant delivery or store pick-up options.
/ Desire for an easy and efficient online checkout process.
/ Difficulty in remembering to water plants.
/ Limited expertise in selecting appropriate plants based on personal requirements like finding pet safe plants.
/ Inadequate knowledge and experience in care instructions.
/ Insufficient visual representation of plants for accurate assessment.
/ Challenges in finding and purchasing plants and pots within desired collections.
/ Difficulty seeking guidance from plant specialists or experts.
/ Frustration of color vision deficiency (CVD) impacting plant selection.
/ Inconvenience of transporting heavy, sick plants to physical stores.
/ Struggling to find honest and complete plant descriptions.
/ Provide a user-friendly interface with advanced search and filtering options for efficient tool research.
/ Incorporate convenient delivery or store pick-up options with real-time tracking and notifications.
/ Streamline the online checkout process for a smooth and efficient experience.
/ Implement watering reminders through push notifications and alerts.
/ Offer a dedicated section or filter for low-maintenance plants and provide clear care instructions.
/ Provide plant recommendations based on personal requirements, including pet-safe options.
/ Include comprehensive care instructions and visual cues for easy understanding.
/ Include high-quality images and visual representations of plants for accurate assessment.
/ Organize plants and pots into collections for easy browsing and purchasing.
/ Integrate live chat or messaging features to connect users with plant specialists.
/ Provide accessibility options for users with color vision deficiency.
/ Ensure accurate and detailed plant descriptions with verified user reviews and ratings.
/ Care assistant application.
To develop Greener, Double Diamond process was used. In fact, the project was launched with stakeholder meetings that involved the CEO of Greener, allowing us to gain a comprehensive understanding of the business goals and requirements. The accompanying diagram provides a snapshot of the process that was subsequently followed.
Survey
To collect questionnaire data about the most relevant and common needs of customers of houseplants in the community, 130+ responses were collected.
Top Three Insights
/ 85% of people have more than three houseplants.
/ 58% of people’s houseplants have died out.
/ 85% of people said they did not know how to heal houseplants.
Interviews
To understand costumers of houseplants’ challenges and coping strategies deeply, 13 participants who recently bought houseplants online were interviewed. The collected information was then organized and categorized to identify patterns and themes by affinity diagram.
Top Three Insights
/ People forget to feed their plants.
/ People don’t know how to keep their plants green.
/ It's hard for People to figure out the size of plants when they are buying online.
To categorizes the information into groups based on their similarities, affinity diagram was created.
To learn about problems that our competitors solve successfully and to identify the top problems customers complain about, 5 related websites and online reviews from each websites' user communities were analyzed.
Top Three Insights
/ Provide sustainable accessories.
/ Provide a care assistant application.
/ Provide efficient accessibility design.
To have all the information from user surveys, interviews and competitive analyses, two personas were created.
Sara Watson
Chicago, USA
Housekeeper
Married & 2 Cats
John Swift
London, UK
HR Manager
Single
Upon thorough analysis of all research data, a comprehensive understanding of the challenges was gained and attempted to address them by incorporating solutions into design.
Pain Points
/ Limited expertise in selecting appropriate plants based on personal requirements like finding pet safe plants.
Solutions
/ Provide plant recommendations based on personal requirements.
/ Offer a dedicated section or filter including pet-safe options. low-maintenance plants.
/ Difficulty seeking guidance from plant specialists or experts.
/ Inconvenience of transporting heavy, sick plants to physical stores.
/ Integrate live chat or messaging features to connect users with plant specialists.
/ Inadequate knowledge and experience in care instructions.
/ Struggling to find accurate and complete plant descriptions and demonstration.
/ Include comprehensive care instructions and visual cues including videos for easy understanding.
/ Provide accurate and detailed plant descriptions with icons to present plant’s info within a glance.
/ Provided images of plants near a chair indicate the sense of scale.
/ Indicate the dimension of each plant.
/ Difficulty in remembering to water plants.
/ Implement watering reminders through push notifications and alerts.
/ Care assistant application.
/ Challenges in finding and purchasing plants and pots within desired collections.
/ Organize plants and pots into collections for easy browsing and purchasing.
/ Providing collection of plants and bundles.
/ Desire for an easy and efficient online checkout process.
/ Streamline the online checkout process for a smooth and efficient experience.
To better understand the user's needs and how they use website and application, user and task flow was created.
To understand how “Greener” works, a sample look was first sketched out. Here are some of them:
By inspiration of nature and roundness shape of the Earth, primary colors were found and then logo, buttons and, in general, design system were designed.
Since it was a start up, I designed logo, as well. To illustrate growing and taking care of plants, the logo was designed with the help of “Golden ratio” and combination of leaves as a symbol of nature and hands as repetitive of caring.
To ensure that services and products are consistent and efficient, a design system was created for "Greener" to. This system included a collection of design elements, guidelines, and rules that can be reused.
/ By Usability Test, Hero image was iterated until we made sure that participates figure out the business values completely.
/ Planting trees was one of the most important business values that attracted and kept customers repeatedly engaging with product and services, so by Usability Test and Iterations, a suitable picture and content were designed.
/ By Usability Test, it was found out that the prosses of choosing the right size between so many items was challenging. Based on this, options were categorized, and customers were able to choose whatever they want step by step.
/ Some types of visual impairment can make it painful to look at bright colors, or large blocks of white might wash over the black text. Also, some people with dyslexia or Irlen’s Syndrome can struggle to read black text on a white background. So, a dark version of the product was designed.
/ Some people with color vision deficiency (CVD), color blindness and low vision can’t differentiate the full color spectrum. So, standard color definitions were designed.
/ For users with visual impairments, it's hard to understand where they are navigating. So, a line under clickable icons was added to clarify.
To show a page and program is loading, a splash screen was designed.
To explain how to utilize application, a series of structured steps was explained in onboard tutorial.
Website
Adoptive Layout
Application
/ Identify plants around you: Research revealed participants have unidentified plants requiring maintenance. Application will include plant identification featur.
/ A Simulated Experience with Augmented Reality (AR): Participants want to use houseplants for home decoration. To help them decide, both the website and app will offer augmented reality (AR) that lets them see how plants would look in their space before buying.
