Project Context

The purpose of this project was to research the care practices of plant owners. Accumulating plants inspired the question, "What would be the best wat to care for multiple plants with different requirements?" A study by NASA revealed that keeping plants in the home can eliminate up to 87% of toxins in the air within 24 hours. This emphasizes that keeping plants in the home is beneficial for our health and learning how to properly care for plants can promote sustainability.

• Team: Individual
• Timeframe: 5 Weeks

Problem Statement

In the area of routines and habits, it is suspected that plant owners are over or under watering their plants due to varying watering and environmental requirements.

Possbile Solution

A solution would be to provide an app that matches plants to people based on their lifestyle and living environment.

Design Process

Discover Phase

It was necessary to conduct interviews to determine if there were common behaviors among plant owners ranging from very experienced to novice. I Interviewed three participants to assess the routines within the range of plant owners. The purpose of the interviews was to get a better understanding of what plant owners find challenging about plant maintenance.

User Interviews

User Interview Questions:

• How many plants do you have in your home?
• How many people live in your home?
• How do you decide what kind of plant you want to purchase or plant?
• What are important things you consider when making your decision to buy a plant?
• What is your approach to keeping track of plant watering recommendations?
• How do you know when each plant needs to be watered?
• Tell me your experience of what you did when you noticed a plant was not receiving proper care.
• What is your approach to avoid over or under watering your plants?
• What is your experience with using apps to monitor routines and schedules?
• How would you feel about using an app that tracks the watering schedules of your plants?

Interview Insights

Quotes:

“We put water in it and left it outside for a couple of days and it came back to life.”

“I put in Google what is wrong with what I see and what to do.”

“If there was some sort of device or reminder that knew when the plant needed to be watered, it could tell me and then I could water the plant.”

Insights From Quotes:

• Users are unable to look for signs of improper plant care.
• Users will take the time to become informed about their plants.
• Users will benefit from getting help with their plant care.

Define Phase

After doing research, I observed that plant owners do not care for plants properly because they uninformed of what each plant needs. This is a problem because each plant may have different care requirements to thrive.

Affinity Map
I collaborated with my cohorts to analyze the responses from the user interviews.

Empathy Map
I found subjects with different experiences owning plants to see if I could find any differences between their routines and habits with plant care.

User Persona:

Ideate Phase

How Might We Questions:

User Story:
In this story board, the user acquires a new plant. After watering, the user notices that the plant is no longer thriving. The user finds an app to determine the best plant for their lifestyle. The user then gets a new plant based on the recommendations and the app provides information on how to properly care for the plant such as watering reminders and how much light to provide. The user then feels confident enough to purchase more plants.

Design Phase

Wireframing:

Prototype:
I created a prototype design for users to complete a quiz by inputting information about where they live, type of climate, lifestyle habits, etc. The app then presents a list of plants to the user that would best suit their needs and where the user can purchase each recommended plant.
The user can keep a record of all the plants they own as well as information on when each plant needs a specific care action. The user can also build their knowledge base of their own plants and determine which plants would be best for them without using the plant match quiz.

Conclusion

My Insights:
My biggest takeaway from this case study was that users are more reliant on searching for information to learn more about their plants. Users are also more likely to look up information about their plants when they are not doing well. The user interview analysis disproved the initial hypothesis. The fact that the users had trouble in maintaining a watering schedule, was a minor paint point.

Future Concepts
For future reference, I would like to expand my research to users in other areas and a wider range of ages. It will also be important to consider the type of climates a variety of users may live in which would determine how well plants may thrive in a particular type of environment.