Plant Buddies
An AI plant application and game for all new and experience plant owners.
My Role
01.
I participated as the team manager with my design team of 6.
02.
I was directly involved in:
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User Interview
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User Journey Map
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Empathy Map
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Storyboard
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Competitive Analysis
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User flow
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Wireframing
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Prototyping
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User Testing
03.
Problem:
People lack confidence in their plant care
knowledge and routine. They need help with
knowing how to care for plants and where to place them in their homes.
04.
Target Audience:
Plant Buddies is for new and experienced plant owners.
05.
Tools:
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Trello
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Figma
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FigJam
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Google Slides
Overview
Our team was tasked with the objective of creating a website
that would help improve a specific group of peoples lives with
the help of AI technology. With that in mind we wanted to
help all struggling plant parents by creating Plant Buddies.
User Research
Highlights of our research and planning
Through our research, we discovered a common thread of unconfident plant owners that have trouble with watering schedules, plant sickness, and everything in between. We believe that our experience will connect plant lovers with other plant owners who can help them with the resources they need to keep their plants alive confidently and will also build a stronger community for plant lovers.
Plant Lover Pat (PLP) is a typical new plant owner that strives to improve their home’s air quality and mental health. They buy a succulent but struggles as it appears to be dying despite following instructions. Discovering Plant Buddies, a free AI-powered site, PLP gets personalized advice by uploading pictures and using the AR tool. Learning the plant needs more sunlight and less water, PLP successfully revives it. Now, PLP intends to rely on Plant Buddies for future plant care and is excited to expand their collection in different rooms.
I compared 3 direct competitors and 2 indirect competitors. From my research, there are a lot of plant apps that help diagnose plants or apps that can help place plants within a room. One of the strong competitors is Plant Life Balance. Their advantages are that it's free, backed by scientific research, and curated plant shopping to name a few. The disadvantages are that it is mainly for people before they buy, fixed to being horizontal view, and no AI assistant, only AR use.
Our site map went through 2 redesigns to reduce the clutter of the navigation bar and to make a more concise menu system. For the community aspect of the app, we decided instead to place a subcategory of friends in the game for users to interact and communicate with other plant enthusiasts.
We focused on 3 key flows for our users to go through. The first one is inputting their room using AR. They could either upload a photo or design a room in the app. The second flow focused on inputting their plant and the care it needs. And lastly, our third flow showcased the game and how to interact with it.
UI Style Guide & Mood Board
From our user interviews, the overwhelming majority wanted an app that has lots of greenery and nature color palette. So we created a mood board that would fit our users' wants and keep a minimalistic look.
​We chose natural colors that occur in nature with shades of green, some yellow and red. In addition, we wanted to keep a cozy, gaming vibe to appeal to users of all ages.
Mid-Fi Prototype
We started designing our website individually so that we could have freedom to brainstorm an optimal interface. When we came together, we combined our favorite aspects of our lo-fi wireframes and our website evolved from there. We had the idea to incorporate the AI camera scanner and the game. Our AI can scan the whole room and observe the furniture, brightness and suggest to users different plants to place in the room based on what is in the photo. Also, the AI will determine what plant is in the photo. Users can chat with an AI spider that can give them tips on how to garden. AI will also diagnose plants if it is injured or infested with pests and provide care and guidance.
Through some user testing, we learned that they like the overall website and loved interacting with the game. One of the struggles was with navigation between the game and the main menu.
High-Fi Prototype
With the mobile version, users can interact with the AI chatbot, plant diagnostics, and new photo upload for keeping track of plant growth and progress. While working on the higher fidelity designs, we became ambitious and fleshed out more aspects of our website such as an in-game store, profile, and a friends list.
Final Thoughts
Our final thoughts about the project is that we had fun doing this project. We enjoyed the research into plant apps and found similar products but lacking certain features that users want. Our ambitions got the best of us and took up much of our time to where we rushed to the end.
For future updates, we would expand the information into edible plants such as herbs, vegetables, expand the game and customization, and general bug fixes.