Ghusn
Keep your plants happy
01
Project Overview
The Product
Resurgent increased popularity of plants has arisen due to quarantine circumstances that make us grow stuff more eagerly and enjoy the joy that plants bring into our homes. But not all of us are experts at taking care of them and we often kill our plant friends. Considering that my team and I decided to explore options for a mobile app that would support plant care, after 6 weeks of intensive research and design we come up with Ghosn.
The Challenge
Design an application that helps people to take care of their plants at a fundamental level. This app should consider requirements for multiple kinds of plants and climates, tips about plant care, as well as provide a way to help users find out what is wrong with their plants. This application is intended for millennials who are keen on creating a plant-rich, organic aesthetic in their homes. I had to think carefully about reminding the user when and how to care for their plants.
TOOL USED
Figma, Miro, Photoshop, Zoom, Zeroheight, Trello
Team
5 team members
Project Duration
6 WEEKS
Role
UX Designer, UX Researcher, Interaction Designer, UI Designers, and Project Managers
02
UNderstanding the user
EMPATHIZE
Initial Research
Before we started crafting our design, we need to learn more about the Plants market and users, we conducted some research, which was: Domain Research, Competitive Analysis, Survey, User Interviews, and finally Affinity map
My team and I did Domain Research to understand and identify gaps and opportunities in the market and to have a solid foundation upon which we can develop the application.
We have done a Competitive Analysis of four direct and indirect competitors to understand their strategies and success in the market.
We interviewed 7 participants and surveyed 100 participants to understand their needs and their experience with plant caring applications
Using affinity mapping to gather opinions and ideas in order to understand our persona
FINDINGS
Based on findings from our research we got these insights
Plant care services
Classify plants according to the level of gardening and level of commitment
Exchange plants
Explore local places
Growth tracking
The key findings from the survey and user interview :
The majority of participants who are interested in plants are between 25 to 44
97% of the participants are female.
The chart shows the level of participant’s expertise in plant caring, the result shows that most of the participants do not know what are they doing some of their plants live and some others die.
97% of the participants prefer to go to the store over online shopping.
Usually buy flowers and plants from regular stores not online.
Usually buy a plant because it looks nice.
Some users prefer to have plants that do not require a lot of care.
They have to search online to find information about a plant.
DEFINE
Persona
Design principles
Information-packed
Make design attractive, and full of plant-based educational material to help users learn and feel more confident
Simplicity
The interface requires little effort from the user to perform the task or process
Accessibility
Using high contrast between text and background colors helps both users with visual impairments and users in low-light settings read text on the screen.
Provides Context
Give users very specific information because every plant is different!
Specific Geographical information
Specialized plant information
03
Starting the design
Initially, I had just planned to create an app that sent reminders and allowed people to find specific care instructions for their plants. However, after a competitor analysis, I found there are many apps like this on the market. hence we started a brainstorming session and get some ideas related to user's frustrations, in the narrowing down step we focused on the high-value yet easy-to-accomplish features and included the must-haves for the main features of the app. Narrowing down the features allowed for a much more refined approach to the product in order to focus on what is needed to appeal to users the most. They are summarised below:
Main FEATURES
SECONDARY FEATURES
WIREFRAMING
Initially, I drew out sketches of the app’s main features first on paper. Then, the polished paper wireframes were turned into digital wireframes which later were used to create a Lo-Fi Prototype.
After that, I created an interactive Lo-Fi prototype of the screen in order to test the usability of the application.
USAbility test
Measure the learnability of Ghusn app with participants who are using the mobile app for the first time.
I am observing whether users understand the navigation and how to use it to complete functions such as adding a new plant, finding their plant garden, and diagnosing a plant that is unwell.
Observation
Users were confused to find that there is no separate Home page
Users attempt to find Home when they looking for plant suggestion
Solution
Create a separate tap for the Home page that contains an overview of the plant tasks and easy access to all other services
Observation
The meaning of set reminder wasn't obvious to the users
Solution
Use a more straightforward vocabulary
Observation
The meaning of Level of maintenance wasn't obvious to the users
Solution
Use a more straightforward vocabulary
04
UI design
mood board
Style tile
FINAL VISUAL DESIGNS
Task tracking
Add your first plant
Add plant using camera identification
Set reminder
viewing plant from your garden
My virtual plant
Takeaways
Overall this was a successful project where my team and I were able to overcome challenges and utilize our design skills to create a product that helps users accomplish their goals.
The whole experience was packed with learnings from beginning to end. during this experience, I enhanced my skills in user research, synthesis, and interaction design, I further solidified my empathy skills both in understanding users and working effectively with a team of fellow designers;
I now have a good grasp of the design thinking process by practicing each step but most importantly by understanding my mistakes.
