On this project
This is a showcase of a project made during Postgraduate Studies on User Experience Design. The project consisted of 5 stages:
- research
- strategy
- modelling
- prototyping
- testing
I was a member of the team creating a solution for plant owners that have trouble keeping their plants alive and healthy. Our main goal was to create a solution that will help the users resolve their problems with taking care of their plants. That will be made possible by creating new, proper habits.
User research
Main research questions:
What are the main troubles and fears concerning taking care of plants?
Where do people get information on how to take care of plants?
How and why are people buying new plants?
Why are people growing plants?
How we conducted the research
Methods: IDI quantitive research, collages, 3 questions for a goldfish
We invited 10 people actively growing plants at home and having some troubles with it. All of them were between ages 25 and 50 because we were planning to create mobile app as a solution for their problems. We created a detailed research scenario which helped us during the interviews.
Each interview was about an hour long. As a warm-up we used photo collages to stimulate our respondents' imagination and help them reconnect with emotions connected to their plants.
The main interview consisted of about 30 question on habits regarding growing plants, motivations, shopping, research, family and emotions. We also used "3 questions for a goldfish" method where respondents could ask it for anything regarding their plants.
What have we learned
1. Emotional relationship with plants is the core of growing plants. It often substitutes a pet and is associated with their families
We should create a solution with a strong emphasis on emotional aspect
2. Low quality, owerwhelming sources of information
We should create a straightforward and easy to use knowledge database regarding specific type of plants
3. Irregularity - trouble with creating habits
We should create reminders and motivational system for creating plant growing habits
Personas
After the interviews we created two personas - our main future users - to help us think more like them in next stages of the project.
Strategy
Target users
We have estimated our main target group to be about 3,5 mln people. We've taken into account people from Poland, living in cities, over poverty line, 75% of whom would be women and 25% would be men. Most of them would be between 16 and 44 years old.
Value Proposition Canvas
We've learned that the main problem of our users is the lack of regularity when it comes to growing plants. People also don't want to spend a lot of time doing research on how to help their plants, they want to have the information as soon as possible.
We should propose a solution that will be monitoring plant state and its needs in real-time with precise solutions on how to take care of a problem with the plant. What's also important, the whole human - interface interaction should be based on emotional aspect.
Customer Journey Map
We've created CJM for our main persona - Róża - and her typical journey with a plant that she owns.
As we can see below, the most critical stages are when she has problems with her plant. When something bad is happening to her plant, she is trying to search for a solution. She feels anxious and worried because of the quality of information she gets. To help her with that, our solution will support her during rough times and reduce negative impact they have on her. The worst part of her experience is when her plant is dying and we will try not to let that happen again.
Inspirations
We have analyzed 50 digital solutions in miscellaneous fields to gather the best practices out there. After analyzing them, we decided that we will:
- create a product that is minimallistic and clean to keep it fashionable and modern as our users' demand
- implement motivational elements in every step of communication with our users
- provide expert content created by our business partners
- make a knowledge-on-demand system
- create a digital sensor that will measure user's plant's most important data to provide him/her with personalized information
Competition
After analyzing our main competition, we came to the conclusion that our solution will be better in two areas - user appreciation and emphasis on the emotional aspect of growing plants as well as monetization model in which we will work with plant-related business to provide content for our users.
Monetization
As most of our users are spending small sums of money on their plants we decided that the app will stay free. The main source of income will be affiliation in CPC model where every click forwarding to partner web store will be calculated.
Touchpoints
Almost 100% of our target group are smartfon users. All of our responders of IDI research searched for information online. Taking into account all of the data that we have, we decided that the main touchpoint will be a mobile app with voice interface and push notifications.
Other touchpoints will be social media, industry-related websites, blogs, public space (guerilla marketing) and plant stores.
KPIs
We will measure our success in three different fields:
1. e-commerce - the percentage of users clicking ads, conversion ratio, web search position
2. content - daily views of articles
3. involvement - everyday users, push notification clicks, app downloads
Modelling
User scenarios
We have created nine user scenarios to walk through typical uses of our future app. Thanks to this method we could see if the process works or not, and what screens will be necessary even before first sketches.
User flows
After creating scenarios, we designed flows to have all interactions in one place and make sure that we thought of everything.
Wireflows
The final stage of this part was sketching all the app's screens.
We used the design studio metod for the most important screens where all of us sketched our own versions of screens. After discussing them, we took everyone's best ideas and created joint solutions.
Prototyping
When we were happy with our wireflows, we started a prototyping stage. We worked on a Axure Share file starting with a simple gray digital wireframe, then moving on to a hi-fi one. Finally, we added interactions so that we could test our app.
Testing
We didn't carry out the tests yet :) This section will we available in June.
