UIUX Design
UX Research
Product Design
Jul 2022 - Sept 2022
Figma
Blender
That premise is why I designed Sprout. This cute, empathy-driven design will paw at your heart strings for attention while also providing you with just enough plant care information to help your little pet sprout.
✦ Redesign of my sophomore year final project.
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✦ Re-conducted research and interviews to determine different design opportunities. Used insights to create a new app and product prototype.
Personal Challenge:
Push limits on what makes a product a toy versus a tool.
Exciting:
Product should be entertaining for the user to interact with.
Intuitive:
Product should be easy to understand and use.
How might we make taking care of plants a more playful yet emotionally satisfying and rewarding activity?
✦ make an account by inputting your name and creating a username.
✦ use the email address used to purchase Sprout pots so they immediately show up during onboarding.
✦ Product set-up: Fill in plant information for each pot you'd like to set up.
✦ Product calibration: Link Sprout plant pots to the Sprout app by calibrating via Bluetooth.
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✦ Quick and easy access to your pet. Brightness of room changes according to the intensity of light emitted from a grow light or natural sunlight.
✦ Interactive: tap on a facial expression [bottom menu] to change the expression shown on the digital interface of the physical pot.
✦ 2 views: isometric view and list view. "Pets" live in this virtual room. Rooms can be decorated through completing in-app achievements [demonstrated in "My Profile"].
✦ Click on a pet to discover more in-depth care information such as the plant's watering routine, sunlight monitoring, and recommended plant care tips.
✦ Interface displays critical user information such as username, date joined, and notification and account settings.
✦ Weekly achievements and badges keep a user motivated to complete their tasks. These can be obtained by taking excellent care of plant pets.
✦ Interactive view of the virtual room and your pets, with a fully interactive game-like "changing room" menu.
✦ Change default facial expressions, pet accessories, and furnishings here.
✦ All items can be collected by doing a superb job in plant-pet care!
✦ Trend is driven mainly by Milennials & GenZ.
✦ Interest in raising plants skyrocketed due to busy lifestyles & housing market pet restrictions.
✦ Home companionship not only gives people "psychological reassurance and comfort", but it also gives people a "sense of responsibility and purpose" [Oxford Academic, OUP]
"I have a few plants that died because I forgot to water them and didn’t know what to do after they started drying up”
“Watering plants doesn’t give me instant gratification...I think it’s a really boring task”
“I can empathize with my dog because he has facial expressions. Plants give me nothing to work with.”
"My cats have immediate responses and behavioral changes that let me know what to do...my plant just sits there."
This iteration was my sophomore year final project.
People like taking care of their pets. We can encourage plant care by growing edible plants that you can feed your pet with.
✦ Product: modular shelves that monitored plant water & nutrient levels.
✦ App: connected all shelves into one platform, reminded users of daily tasks & when to harvest plants.
“My pets don’t really eat that many vegetables, I feel like this product would only be for hamster or bunny owners”
“I’d use this product but I don’t know how an app telling me when to water would truly motivate me”
“I don’t see the connection between plants and pets...couldn’t I just eat the vegetables myself?”
What if plants were your pets?
I decided to take the feedback I received from my previous iteration and revisit this project. This process began with conducting more user interviews and and doing further market research; which all combined, led to new and improved insights & ideas.
Anthropomorphization: to endow a non-human entity with human qualities.
✦ People like taking care of their pets because they can empathize easily with them.
✦ We can encourage plant care by creating a pot that displays anthropomorphic emotions and gamifying the plant care experience.
✦ Appeals to the human empathetic nurturing instinct.
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✦ “Gamified responsibility” becomes a form of stress relief rather than a stressor
✦ Feigning interaction and conversation with a virtual pet makes you become more empathetic towards it [examples shown on right]
“I had a tamagotchi when I was younger I loved, I think this concept would really work on me”
“Sometimes I really can’t motivate myself to water my plants...I think if my plant was asking me for water i would be more inclined to help it”
“This is a cute idea, I would definitely take better care of my plants if it was showing me emotions like content and happy or crying and thirsty”
The Sprout app went through 3 major iterations.
Using WebAIM's online contrast checker, I confirmed that my color combinations passed WCAG AA standards.
I interviewed 7 different target users [young adult, who own plants]. Using the user feedback given, I iterated on a few major design revisions.
“Some icons don’t really give me any plant wellbeing information”.
Changed icons to represent the actions required of the user. [ex. from a sad "i need water" face icon to a simple water level icon]
“There’s too many colors going on everywhere, it confuses me”.
Changed app from green to purple, limited color palette to purples for a more cohesive "game"-type aesthetic.
“Compared to your other sections, the inventory interface is boring”.
Increased interactivity of interface, has a more game-like experience format.
joke wireframe of Sprout in its early stages.
✦ Never be afraid of redoing a project! This initially started as my sophomore year final project. As I grew older, my design knowledge also expanded, so it was a breath of fresh air being able to rework this project.
✦ I do not have a solid conclusion for my question “what makes a product a toy versus a tool?”, and that’s okay! This question was meant to lead me through the design process, it does not necessitate a final destination.
✦ This was a project focused mainly on UIUX, so only the concept of the pot was needed; however, it would be fun to revisit this project and create a pot 3D model and rendering.
