PlantFix
A Mobile Plant Care Application Addresses Millennials' Issues with Plant Care and Competitors' Shortcomings
Insights
After conducting a week of interviews, each lasting 40-60 minutes, I identified five common pain points among participants. While many issues were anticipated, some unexpected challenges emerged, such as unfamiliarity with the local climate. Interviewees revealed that plant care instructions, often found on small tags, lack clarity. For example, advice to provide 4-6 hours of indirect sunlight is difficult to interpret without knowing the specifics of their local climate or the sunlight conditions of particular windows.
Research > User Profile
Millennials grew up with technology and heavily rely on technology for success and answers. If the technology fails they hesitate to ask for advice from others.
When their expectations are not attained quickly, the Millennial Generation will search for new opportunities and new projects.
Millennials are starting their families a lot later than other generations. The term "Plant Patent" was started by this generation.
Due to putting off starting a family and loving independent work, Millennials built a bond with their plants and care about succeeding
Research > User Persona
Research > Competitor Research
'Identify the plant by photo" USER FLOW | LeafSnap
Insights
My finding showed that the user flow of these apps contains additional questions, relying on users to narrow the search result.
1. The 'choose related type' step allowed users to select what kind of image they are uploading; leaf, flower, fruit, or bark.
2. The 'choose a match from users' images' shows a great variety of photos of the same plant type that other users previously uploaded. Since the same plant types can look very different, this approach eliminates mistakenly disregarding identification results due to minor differences in the image.
Research > Feature Prioritization
Most Important
Identify a plant by photo
Set watering schedule and reminders
Important
Fix a sick plant
Suggest care routine
Less Important
Show confidence score of a match
Plant articles
Like and comment posts
Ads for plant tools
Not Important
Post a plant you have identified to help others
Find other users nearby
Chat with other users
Outcome
I have concentrated on creating the most commonly used path by users, the "Identify the plant by photo" path, with selecting a care routine and saving reminders. I used the finding from the competitor analysis to increase the accuracy of the identification results. I have decided that creating a mascot for the app to address users' motivation and to stay up to date with the industry trends. The three overlapping circles are the mascot representation.
