Bloom
An app that offers a unique and convenient way for plant enthusiasts to trade and exchange their plants with others in their local area
An app that offers a unique and convenient way for plant enthusiasts to trade and exchange their plants with others in their local area
Designing the perfect plant-swap experience
During the COVID-19 pandemic, with so many restrictions on going outside, house plants became our link with nature and plant swaps became a new way to connect. The growing interest in plant swaps, was very visible on gardening related facebook groups, where all the swap action took place.
Group members were offering plant cuttings or baby plants in return for other plants and within seconds plant lovers replied showcasing their inventory and hoping to be the chosen ones to make the swap. Seeing this flourishing trend of sharing economy, motivated me to take on the challenge to design the perfect plant swap experience.
Before jumping off into my research I wanted to understand a contextual situation of when and where my app will be used. I sketched a quick storyboard of the swap experience I had in mind for an experienced user.
Based on my targeted audience, I talked to 10 potential users between the ages of 25-50 who are interested in plants and are engaged at the online plant community. My main goal on those interviews was to get to the core of their problems and needs
After reviewing all the data I got from the potential users, I established these key insights to help me move forward with my design process and prioritize the things I should focus on designing first
To form a location based swap experience, users could see swap options available nearby. Distance information will be high on the visual hierarchy across all relevant screens
To flatten the learning curve and reduce friction, users could easily upload plants to their personal collection using Plant AI identification
To increase users' credibility, we will add social proof to each profile using reviews given by other users, which will be concluded into a personal score
To help users fulfill their "plant dreams", we will add a wishlist feature. Turning on notifications will update users when a plant from their wishlist is available for swap.
To define a full structure of the experience I mapped the user flow for my primary persona. Understanding the user journey, helped me gain a clearer picture for the wireframes to come and identify not only potential problems but also opportunities on how we can further improve the plant-swap experience.
My high level goal was help the users complete a full swap process. To achieve that and to be able to define success, I broke down the swap into 3 measurable goals.
To understand my design direction I began laying out the user interface with quick wireframe sketching
When thinking about the final design of Bloom I aimed to reflect the my users who told me during out interviews, how much adding plants into their homes made such a positive impact on them. During a world pandemic that brought mostly feelings of stress, fear and worry, plants offered positive feelings of relaxation and comfort that helped people stay grounded.
My key design goal on the final look of Bloom was to transfer those positive feelings from the physical encounter with plants, into a digital experience.
This project was so much fun to work on. The initial insights I got from my users, made me think about more opportunities for them to benefit from Bloom. Here are the next steps for this project as I see them:• Interviewing more users in order to get broader user analysis• Expanding the sharing ideation to other plant-related objects that were brought up during the interviews, such as handmade pots. • Developing the “Grow” feature ,that will enable users to learn how to propagate plants properly.• Conducting usability testing and continue optimization.