Perennial
About :
Perennial is an app that allows one to manage, share, get inspired by, and learn about gardening.
The Idea :
I wanted a place designated to sharing plants, showing progress, and chatting with others about gardening. I wasn't sure what else would be needed to draw people into using something like this. So my main question was:
What would garden enthusiasts want out of an app?
Competitor Analysis
After analyzing seven apps, I found that "GrowIt! Garden Socially" was the strongest competitor.
Weak points
- overwhelming navigation and hierarchy
- purposeless tagging and features
- generalizes botanical nomenclature
- inaccurate information
- limited features
Strong points
- identifying your plant or leaving it to the community
- listing where/how the plant is planted
- searchable plant information and requirements
- collaborative community posts
- reminders
“I love being able to see what people around me are growing, but why should we put a name if you’re not adding it to the database?”
“I thought I'd be able to chat with other gardeners in my area with this social garding app, but there's no messenger.”
“I have seen many plants that are misnamed and still approved. The concept of the app is good, but the database is horrible.”
My Approach
Despite the problems, I felt that this app had some great features. But even if it was fixed, the branding still wouldn't be visually cohesive. So I decided that starting fresh would be a better approach.
How Might We
After an exhaustive brainstorm, ideas were narrowed down for a minimum viable product. These are the features that were selected to encourage user participation:
- pictures contributed by users get added to plant guides using identification tags
- plant identification assistance can be done and/or requested
- inspiration page/suggested posts inspire and motivate users
- users can follow and chat with others publicly and privately
- a weekly or monthly featured picture would be fun
- reminders would help users thrive
- making text casual and precise would promote a welcoming and knowledgable feel
- community contributions could help with accuracy
Objective
The app should be clean, user friendly, and take advantage of nature's beauty through the use of imagery.
Color Choices
Heavily inspired by soothing vibes and plants.
Naming
The chosen name is 'Perennial'. Perennials are plants that endure well and grow for a long time. The name is strong, simple, positive, and relevant.
Font
Overpass is an interpretation of the well-known “Highway Gothic” letterforms, which means it is very readable at many sizes.
Userflow
This shows a user posting a picture, and then looking at it under their profile.
Invision Prototype
You can use invision to test the design.
Concluding Thoughts
This visual style was developed to achieve the goal of how the app should feel. More pages need to be designed using the same visual approach to fully check off the ideas that came from asking ‘how might we.’
