PROJECT : Bonsai
ROLE : Experience, Visuals, Team Lead
DURATION : 1.5 weeks
Helping people find the perfect plant.
Find tips, tricks and set up routines to keep you both healthy & happy. Utilize Augmented Reality to keep up to date on your plants vitals and special needs.
Transition Splash
" How often do I need to water this plant? "
Me - 2021
Kick off
Our inciting question led us to propose ourselves a simple challenge. Develop an intuitive experience to inform and assist users with relevant data & information.
How would the user interact with the product in different parts of the day?
How do we create an ecosystem of information relevant to users at all levels of expertise?
How could we incorporate augmented reality into the core loop of the experience.
Will the on boarding help the users understand the functionality as well as to discover how the application works?
Identifying User Needs
To address many of our design questions we first needed clarity on the experiences of our user base. From here we’d be able to extrapolate the kinds of functionality and information needed to resolve various pain points.
A short questionnaire was drafted & distributed. Participants were also shorty interviewed
Participants Testimonies
" We water them whenever we remember lool usually every 2 days, the bigger one requires more water but watered less often "
" If you live in a house with too much or too little humidity, that could kill them. You mess up on watering them or do too much, they could die "
" How much water are you supposed to give them? Do you spray em? You use a canteen, or use a plate? Some people tell me yeah, others say no, that's gonna kill em "
User familiarity questionnaire
Shared Spaces
We went through some of the top-rated apps to analyze the
features and treatments provided for their users.
Upon deconstructing the experience within each app, we wrote down a short list of positive and negative characteristics. These findings influenced our design decisions moving forward.
Garden Answers
Vera
Sun Seeker
My Garden
Plant Guide
POSITIVES
Identify your plant
Comprehensive glossary
Assess sunlight & water
Social Features
NEGATIVES
- Overly complicated interface
- Information dense display
- Undefined entry and exit points
- Lack of user friendly on boarding
User Journey & Information Ecosytem
We compiled our data and charted out how we wanted our users to interact actively and passively, along with how they would contribute to the overall community database of tips, tricks and suggestions.
Whiteboard Draft - User Onboarding
Final Iteration - User Flow, Info Eco
During this structuring phase we held a short divergent brainstorming session to highlight various points of difference we might be interested in exploring further on.
Feature short list
Prototypes & Iterations
We moved on to Figma to develop our grey box prototype and scope our project down. Most importantly we wanted to ensure we could rapidly iterate on our project and have it feature complete by our deadline.
Grey box
After performing a few test runs on the grey box, our findings showed users would spend a large portion of their time on the main page & user feed. With this we chose to extrapolate the overall aesthetic from the final drafts of these pages.
Iterations on our main page
Our initial draft ended up feeling too serious and bland. Our second pass went more playful, with our third being a happy middle ground of the previous iterations. Moving forward we primarily focused on usability to inform our changes to the layout.
Color treatment
Green Iterations
#EBC70E - #F0B555
Yellow Iteration
#EBC70E - #F0B555
Blue Iterations
#4AA8A0 - #2683F3
Red Iterations
#F6D4E3 - #E684AE
Final Palette
Final palette selection
We decided on more pastel hues to reflect the playful nature of our design, whilst using them sparingly as spot colors and highlights to maintain that clean, contemporary minimalist a e s t h e t i c .
High Fi and Solutions
Keeping informed
The most integral aspect of our design is to break down as many barriers to entry for users looking to get into #planthood. We provide a small bio, care graph and schedule for each plant based on unique identifiers and background information upon taking its picture.
Keeping track
These tools provide the user with relevant up-to date information on the vitals, schedule and reminders for their plant. Easing the burden of responsibility and easing them into maintaining a care routine.
Keeping connected
One of the greatest feelings is being connected with a community who share your passions. We aim to provide users the utility to stay in the loop, up-to date and informed by creating an information ecosystem that gets fleshed out as users submit, tags, comments, tips & tricks about their plants.
Keeping consistent
For us, usability and readability was at the forefront of our design philosophy. Ensuring the most pertinent information and functions are at our user fingertips drove our iteration process. This included streamlining our layouts, reducing redundancies and other visual clutter that may detract from the core experience.
AR Implimentation
We prototyped our concept utilizing Unity AR Kit & Google AR Core SDK. This provided us with a tangible space to test and iterate upon our initial Augmented UI designs. We were able to address major usability concerns unique to the environment, including but not limited to:
- Scalability/readability,
- Object tracking,
- Contrast/clarity
Unity prototype displays
Key take away
During the process I learned a great deal about the considerations that go into designing for a Three Dimensional and Augment Reality space. Though our time on the project was heavily condensed and divided between the main app interface, dabbling in AR has been fruitful
THANK YOU
Lets create together! Feel free to reach out to me stevierayca@gmail.com
The Team
Stevie Ray HUNTER
