Plantorama AI
Creating an app for Plantorama’s customers that combines plant identification and monitoring through a virtual recognition model in IBM Watson Studio
When nature meets artificial intelligence
Type of project: University UX design project
My roles: UX Designer, User Researcher & Project Manager
Tools used: Figma, Miro, Google Drive, Zoom, pen &
paper
Duration: 4 weeks (2 weeks of user research, 1 week of UX design, 1 week testing and delivery)
Project Overview
The Client
Plantorama is a Danish garden center, with 11 stores across Denmark, offering a deep range of indoor and outdoor plants.
Its target audience is represented by families with children and
elderly people. Still, the company has the chance to attract a young audience by using AI in its value proposition, to identify and care for plants.
Problem Statement
People encounter certain difficulties regarding plants: not being able to identify a plant, not knowing what plant to choose, or how to care for it properly.
“How can plant newbies identify, purchase, and take care of a plant?”
“How can Plantorama attract the young audience and offer customised plant advice across all its platforms?”
Solution – Outcome
An app was created to help the company provide more value to its customers by offering professional, personalised plant advice on-the-go, at any given time.
The new designed app (PlantoMama):
- identifies unknown plants
- offers the option to buy the plant on Plantorama’s web shop
- sends notifications when the plant needs to be watered
- identifies plant diseases
- offers tips for personalised plant care
- inspires users to buy plants by suggesting trendy plants in season
The Design Process
The project was completed following a design thinking approach, the Double Diamond model: Discover, Define, Develop, Test, Deliver.
From discovering the users’ needs, to defining the problem statement, and developing and testing the concept, this model represented the process “of exploring an issue more widely or deeply (divergent thinking) and then taking focused action (convergent thinking).” (Design Council, 2019).
Discover
Conducting Contextual Interviews
Structured, contextual interviews were conducted to understand the users’ behaviour and needs regarding plants.
The interviews were performed on 5 representatives of the target group, women 20–35 years old. The focus was on women because preliminary research showed that men are more likely to shop at Plantorama in the pet department, and mostly with their families.
All these insights were later used in the Develop stage of the design thinking process.
Findings from the interviews
The interviews revealed that:
- the users encounter challenges in properly watering the plants and in identifying plants or plant diseases
- the users are influences by friends, Instagram, or Pinterest in their plant buying process
- they would ask their mothers of Google for help in case a plant is dying
- when asked what they would expect from a plant app, the interviewees mentioned the option to know when to water, when to change the pot size, and the possibility to exchange plants with other people
Ethnographic Research
Ethnographic research observation also provided valuable insights. This was conducted on a 28 years old Danish woman who agreed to be recorded when talking about her plant preferences, while showing her home plant collection, and when shopping at Plantorama.
The problems she encounters are: overwatering plants, difficulty to understand the plant label, and lack of knowledge for identifying plant diseases.
She would like to receive reminders for watering the plants and be able to buy a plant she discovers on Instagram or Pinterest.
Define
Value Proposition Canvas
Value Proposition Canvas was used to analyze what Plantorama offers to its customers, to see how their pains could be relieved, and to brainstorm on how the proposed digital concept could help them.
Develop
Intergrating the principles of circular economy
This digital concept respects the circular economy principles, by helping Plantorama “to design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use, regenerate natural systems” (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2017).
By using this app, Plantorama’s customers can prolong the life of a plant or return the dead plant in the shop, to be placed in the compost bin, becoming soil for new plants.
Creating the prototype in Figma
The new digital concept meets users’ needs for plant recognition and plant caring. The newly designed app identifies plants, plant diseases, offers personalised plant advice through a chatbot, and can connect to Smart Home assistants.
Test
Heuristic Evaluation &
Usability Testing
Usability testing was conducted for the paper prototype and Jakob Nielsen’s 10 heuristic evaluation sheet was used before creating the wireframes and clickable prototype.
One of
the hypotheses that was confirmed during the usability testing is that plant newbies want to be able to identify a plant, buy it right away, and receive notifications for watering.
Deliver
An E-commerce Concept powered by AI
The algorithmic commerce app uses a form of AI: a visual recognition model from IBM Watson. The model was trained to identify 5 of the most popular plants. The more data the model will have, the higher the accuracy will be.
The user receives suggestions of plant varieties within the same plant family and will be able to create a plant collection based of personal preferences.
Once the plant is identified, the user can purchase it in the Plantorama online shop or in the physical store.
Explore other projects
UX DESIGN PROJECT
Billigblomst is a popular Danish garden center chain. The goal of this individual project was to improve the buying user experience on their website.
UX DESIGN PROJECT
Designing a gamified app for SEO beginners that leverages gamification and motivation theory to keep users engaged and motivated in their learning journey. Bachelor Thesis Project
Contact
© 2023 Maria Copilau – UX Designer | All rights reserved