Overview
Creating an app that lowers the barrier to start maintaining and growing in your garden, through a task & photo based user flow that guides a user on maintaining and planting a garden through knowing, doing, and seeing.
Gardening is a large market that hasn’t been focused on with technology advancement. In 2018-2019 American gardeners spent $47.8 billion in lawn and garden retail purchases.* Average household set an annual spending record of $503 in 2018, and 29% of these consumers are 18-35 and growing.
Problem
New gardeners do not know where to start on building and maintaining a garden. Without knowledge of tasks to make a garden successful, many gardeners talk about the struggle of failing in gardens and believe they have a “brown thumb”
User Interviews
I interviewed 15 people to start with this project to understand their needs from both an apartment dweller to home owners with age ranging from 21-45. Key takeaways that helped me develop my idea, needs, and inform competitive research were:
“I don’t know how to start”
“What plants do well in my location”
“I don’t write things down, forget, and don’t know what to do.”
“I forgot about a plant and it died”
“I take pictures to help me remember what I did.”
“What is a USDA zone?”
Competitive Research
I researched in interviews and online what garden help is available. I found three groupings of competitive research; Analog / Local, Apps, and Search.
Starting a written journal to keep track of what you did/planted
Seeking advice from local garden centers
Instagram as photo journal
Garden Companion App as written journal & resource
iScape as planning
Pinterest & Google as search for ideas, starting, planning, design, and troubleshooting
As researching these potential competitions to a gardening app I found 5 main issues that were missing from these experiences that could help users in gardening. Each competition had something good in it, but overall each could not give the user the direction to start and maintain their garden.
Not quick on hand
Too much writing
Need to already know what to look for
Not trustworthy
Doesn’t determine USDA Climate Zone
MVP Features
Know, Do, See
After interviewing and research I found that something that felt customizable but not too much with participation from the user was an area of opportunity. This lead me to the three key features of the MVP which encompass the idea of know, do, and see.
Know USDA Zone
First determine the garden region so that the user can understand their environment better.
Do Tasks on List
Suggest tasks to do for the user’s region and allow the user to add additional tasks custom for their garden.
See progress with Photos
Using the phone camera user can take photos and organize them to view and compare progress.
Personal Project
Roles: UX/UI Designer and Researcher
Project Type: Personal
Under Development, Patent Pending and Trademarked. www.sowyourgarden.com
Users
I created three different users for my project, all ranging in their finances, living situations, and goals.
User Flows & Sitemap
Knowing the users, goals, and my features, I built out what I felt would be beneficial flows for the user to work through their tasks and learn about their garden space.
Sketching
One favorite part of the design process is sketching out my ideas with pencil and paper. Through sketches I’m able to get quick feedback from potential users and test out ideas for layout in my idea before even touching a computer.
Wireframes & Testing
In testing wireframes, I was able to find what users were driven towards and excited them
Users enjoyed the ease at being able to look at what to do for the future and what they had done in the past.
Users were drawn to the photo feature so that they were able to view photos together.
I learned to show the needs of the user first.
I learned to not focus on additional features such as notes.
Final
Using illustration and a robust first time user experience, the focus on the app is learning information from the user with their location then having task lists created from the USDA data on gardening in climate zones, then prompting the user to take a photo as often as they choose. This allows for general knowledge on things to do weekly and seasonal for their climate zone, and through photo comparison the user than can see their progress when they may feel there isn’t progress.
Currently working on the MVP more with an engineer to launch by end of year.
