Carnivorous plants made easy!
Savage Gardener
Savage Gardeners is a carnivorous plant care app designed to teach new growers and to help veteran growers succeed with a suite of powerful tools that can identify plants, provide care tips, and log plant growth progress.
About
Savage Gardeners is an app that teaches people how to take care of carnivorous plants
Timeframe
The creation of this app took 3 months
The Problem
Newbies to the hobby of growing carnivorous plants are presented with outdated or outright false information, usually resulting in the death of their plants.
The Solution
In order to solve this problem, I created Savage Gardeners, which helps carnivorous plants growers of all skill levels by providing them the tools to identify their plants, teach them about their plants’ care requirements, and log the growth journey of their plants
My Role
I conducted initial market and user research and used this information to create two defined key personas that the app would be catered towards. I then used this research to inform my decisions in creating the Savage Gardeners application.
Research
In order to get a feel for what features are most important in a gardening app, I performed a SWOT analysis on my competitors in the market, which helped me define what my product should be like and what problems it could solve.
The key competitors I looked at were Vera, Planta, and PictureThis.
Vera
Planta
PictureThis
SWOT Analysis
Ideation and Interview Highlights
In order to get a better understanding for the types of people that engage in growing plants and what they worry about, I interviewed five candidates of varying skill level. Through these interviews and analysis, I identified four key, consistent problems people had when they attempted to care for their plants.
Users and Audience
Based on all of my previous research, I created two user personas to better define who would end up using my product. This allows me to better define the features and functions necessary to help shape my product design by catering everything towards these two personas’ needs.
Barry Burns: The Beginner
Goals: Just keep a plant alive!
Needs: Detailed instructions, defined schedule
Motivations: Successfully caring for a living thing, growing something cool to share with others
Problems: Overwatering and underwatering plants, Fear of watching something die, lack of knowledge, lack of time
Winnie Torres: The Green Thumb
Goals: Care for multiple, expensive plants
Needs: Monitor growth of multiple plants
Motivations: Satisfaction from growing hard plants, beautiful plants for others to look at
Problems: Keeping track of way too many plants at the same time, not enough time to monitor multiple plants
Sketches
With my research and two personas in mind, I started to create my sketches. Originally, I designed the app around two key features in order to appeal to both the Beginner and Green Thumb personas.
Based on my research, the Green Thumb wouldn’t need very much direct knowledge from the app itself, so I provided them with a comprehensive Plant Profile section that would give them a lot of powerful monitoring tools they could use to document the growth of their plants and notify them when they needed to perform specific care regimes on their plants.
With the Beginner, my research showed that they would need a lot of hand holding and direct help, so I created a Plant Community feature that would function as a library filled with carnivorous plant growing tips directly provided by the carnivorous plants community. My thought was that if you built up a community of experts, they could help provide time proven care instructions for plants that beginners could then follow.
This feature was changed later on into a “Chat with Expert” function because I believed that Beginners needed even more help than simply just searching for answers in a database. Then, even later on, this feature was then removed and changed into the final Camera Plant Identification feature, because it was simply faster and more efficient to provide Beginners the help they needed right away, instead of directing them towards a chat feature that may or may not yield answers.
Plant Profile
Plant Community
Chat with Expert
Photo Plant Identification
This is the Plant Profile feature of the app, which is tailored towards Green Thumb persona expert-level users. Research showed that these users already knew how to care for their plants, but were usually overwhelmed by having too many plants with different care cycles they needed some way to monitor them.
With this Plant Profile tool, these users are able to create profiles for each of their plant, inside which are tons of data entry points where they can set up reminders for the care of each plant, such as how much light they need, how frequently they need to be watered, and other details.
This is the Plant Community feature that I originally envisioned to help Beginner-level users in caring for their carnivorous plants. It was originally supposed to be a database created by and for carnivorous plant growers, filled with up to date articles on how to care for specific plants. Users would simply look up the plant they wished to care for, and would find a library filled with practical care tips.
However, as I performed more research and analysis, I quickly realized that I was simply just creating yet another repository of information, some of which could already be found by searching the internet. Another problem was that I would then need to spend time either hiring or growing a community of carnivorous plant experts. Finally, beginners would most likely be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available.
The Plant Community feature turned into this chat feature instead. Beginners would have the option to directly speak with someone live about their plants. My idea with this was that Beginners needed a lot more help than what they could find themselves through a database, and what better than to speak directly with an Expert about their problems?
Later on, this feature would be removed as it would be an incredibly expensive and inconvenient feature based entirely on having live chat agents online to help people. It would also be inconvenient for Beginners if there were no Experts online available to help, as most Beginners need help immediately.
This is also when the idea of a Plant Identification feature came into play as part of the user flow. Further analysis showed that Beginner level gardeners needed a way to just directly know what plant they were working with, and the easiest way to do this would be for the app to simply tell them what their plant was by taking a picture of it.
This also flowed neatly into two separate functions. The user could directly ask for help on their plant by clicking on the Diagnose button, which would lead to the previously mentioned Talk to Expert feature, or they could add the plant they just took a picture of to their Plant Profile for later use.
Wireframes
When I started creating my wireframes, I tried to figure out ways on how people will be taking care of their plants and where they are starting from, as a first time experience. Because of this, my wireframes started to take shape in two directions.
Photo Identification
Potential Issues and Expert Chat
My Plants
Plant Profile
Plant Notes
The key feature that was brought over from my sketches was the Photo Identification feature. I decided to integrate this feature into the heart of the application, because it would be useful for both Beginner and Green Thumb users.
Users would click on the Identify button to open up their device’s camera, where they would then point at their carnivorous plant and take a picture. The app would then directly identify the plant, and provide care instructions. Users could then click on the Diagnose button to see what’s wrong with their plant, or add the plant to their Plant Profiles.
I also provided an edge case menu, where if the app was unable to identify the plant, it would tell the user to retake the picture.
The Diagnose feature was later removed from the final product because after further research, I realized that using photos to determine why a plant is sick is simply not feasible. Having an Expert directly speak with the user would be better, but since I also took that feature out, there was no point keeping this in.
If a user clicks on Diagnose from the previous menu, the application automatically informs them of any potential issues. The user can then click on Talk to Expert to bring up the Live Chat to speak directly with an Expert who can then tell them how to fix their plants.
This feature was later removed when I moved on to Hi Fidelity prototypes, because it required too many moving parts and actual employees or Experts to run the chat. This was not feasible and actually a detriment to new users.
This is the My Plants flow. Basically after identifying a plant, users can then add the plant directly to their My Plants section for later use. By doing this, Users can click directly into each plant that they have saved and see what care requirements the plants have, so they don’t have to constantly take pictures of their plant every time they want to see how to care for their plants.
As I was working on my prototype, I realized that I didn’t have enough features or functions for Green Thumb level experts. When I was working on my hi fidelity prototypes, I added in much more granular level plant profile features, where users can manually add in plants and their care regimes if they already know what they are.
This is very important because some power users already know exactly what their plants need, and just want to jump directly to setting care reminders for their plants, instead of having to go through the entire camera identification flow.
A new feature I added after further analysis was the option to access a plant journal and put notes to log the progress of the growth of their carnivorous plants. This is important and useful for both Green Thumb and Beginner level users for monitoring the progress of their plants. They can take pride in the progress of their plant over time by looking at the pictures, or they can seek out long term problems if there is a physical decline in their plants.
Style Guide
I picked visual design choices that felt friendly, soft, and relaxed. I wanted for the application to give off the same, cozy feeling that caring for plants would give someone.
Prototype
Based on the initial low fidelity wireframe and iteration process, I further developed the structure to a higher fidelity prototype showcasing how the finished product would look like and function. From there I created a simple click through prototype to conduct user testing and get an in-depth understanding of how users interact with the product, and if there were any obstacles they faced and any positive or negative experiences with the product.
Plant Identification
This is the plant identification feature of the application. Users click on the Identify button on the app, then take a picture of the plant. The app will automatically identify what kind of plant it is, then give them care tips for the plant immediately. They can then add the plant to their plant profiles for later use.
Plant Profile
Users have the option to add plants directly to their plant profile by entering all the information for the plant, along with personal notes on care. This feature is important for Green Thumb expert level users that are very good at taking care of their plants because it allows for them to directly enter the information and care tips required to take care of their plants, since they already know what their plants need. It also allows for them to have Reminders set up to remind them when they need to care for their plants, especially if they have a lot of them. This is also a good feature for Beginner level users because if they want to get more granular with the care of their plants, and adjust their care schedule.
Plant Journal
Finally, users have the option to access a plant journal and put notes to log the progress of the growth of their carnivorous plants. This is important and useful for both Green Thumb and Beginner level users for monitoring the progress of their plants. They can take pride in the progress of their plant over time by looking at the pictures, or they can seek out long term problems if there is a physical decline in their plants.
Outcomes
Prioritizing user testing and research helped me quickly understand user behavior and improvements needed for Savage Gardeners. It also helped me to create an application that addressed the needs and issues that the personas I initially created.
For example, for Barry Burns, the beginner, he now has an application that is catered to his beginner’s journey into carnivorous plants. He has access to tools that allow him to better care for his plants, such as the camera feature that allows him to identify what plants he purchased automatically, and generates care tips for him to carefully follow.
For Torres, the expert, the application contains a suite of tools that are useful for more advanced gardeners, such as the ability to track plant progress and for the ability to track the needs and care requirements for all carnivorous plants currently owned. There are also more granular tools for them to use to better dial in their experience to their own needs, such as the ability to manually add in care tips and regimes that they know works better than the default recommendations. This helps the advanced user care for multiple plants at the same time without forgetting about any of them.
Lessons Learned
What I learned from this entire process was how to ideate, research, and come up with a working prototype for my very first product. Starting from nothing and creating an entire product was a hugely educational experience that taught me how the entire UI/UX process works.
In the future, I know better how to do market research and how to ideate better by using more carefully curated test users, and how to make better prototypes in Figma.
