Problem

Obtain enough information for our clients algorithm to be effective

Solution

Create a plant matching algorithm for people just starting to garden and people that are beginner gardeners but have some plants

Survey Screening Results

As the researcher for this project, I started by collecting and sorting through the user interviews and screener survey results that our client provided. Throughout the twelve user interviews and two hundred survey responses, these were a few key trends that I noted:

The above chart displays a vast majority of participants claimed to communicate with others about their gardening hobby. This supports the results we found in user interview responses (to be discussed later), that gardening is a highly social activity. Gardeners share their findings, ask for advice or tips, and their own plant growth progress with others. Because of this, we wanted to add a community feature to the prototype to encourage users to chat with others and form communities.

This last chart above displays what plants gardeners would be interested in growing. More than half of the chart consists of vegetables (at ~39%) and herbs (at ~21%). Herbs are a very easy plant to grow, maintain, and use. Gardeners who also aim to cook can reuse herb plants and do not take much space. Vegetables, such as tomatoes, and peppers, were also cited frequently as potential vegetable options for gardeners. They are very hardy plants, both of which can also produce multiple batches of vegetables over time. We used this information to aid in the visual layout and interface design of our prototype.

This chart displays how the survey participants view their own personal gardening skill. As you can see most participants rated a 3 or lower, and only about 15% rated above 3. This lack of personal projected skill could relate to some of the more complex aspects of gardening, some techniques of which were provided in user interviews. We applied this information to our prototype by encouraging users to garden and increase their confidence, which would as a result increase their personal projected skill level.

User Interviews

Affinity Map

Empathy Map

Both of these artifacts focus on supporting our key features, and increasing our empathy and understanding of our users and their expectations.

Field Interviews

Lastly, my team and I conducted field research by interviewing four potential users of the LzyFarmer app to gain a greater understanding of their personal experiences with gardening. From the responses we collected we recorded a few stand out quotes that helped drive our decisions during prototype development.

“I like taking care of them, I’m happy seeing them grow.”

“It’s like a part time job.”

“It starts with one and it grows.”

“ I think we all want to nurture something. It’s in our DNA.”

All of these quotes support what users of the LzyFarmer are truly looking for as both potential customers and gardeners:

• For one, gardeners gain a great amount of satisfaction and happiness from their hobby. Seeing their plants grow over time thanks to their own efforts is extremely rewarding

• Gardening takes time, and takes a lot of dedication. Some of this time could be mitigated with proper tools or knowledge. Something we hope to provide with LzyFarmer

• Passion is something we found repeating often throughout both surveys and interviews. Those who consider themselves gardeners can become obsessed with their hobby, wanting to grow their own plant collection more and more over time.

• This last quote is one that stood out to us the most. The subconscious desire to nurture could indeed be something innate within the human mind. We live to take care of others and provide.

Paper Sketches

Prototype

Landing Page

Plant Input

Community

My Garden

Storyboard