Planter is a user-centric online web-based solution designed to bridge the gap between people and nature by promoting sustainable practices. With a focus on enhancing user experience, Planter offers a seamless interface and interactive features, including community engagement tools, curated resources, and even facilitating individual-based contributions such as planting. Planter aims to educate and empower users, fostering a strong sense of community and environmental consciousness.
“How might the community in the Greater Seattle Area access information and resources to build environmentally friendly habits and promote sustainability, addressing the disconnect between people and nature “nature deficit” and mitigating the effects of climate change?”
UI/UX DESIGNER
DEVELOPER
PROJECT MANAGER
FIGMA, WIREFRAMING, PROTOTYPING, RESEARCH, HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT, DATABASE MANAGEMENT, REACT APP
JUN 2023 - AUG 2023
With the rise of technology since the 1950s, as highlighted by Seilin Kesbir in "A Growing Disconnection From Nature is Evident in Cultural Products" (Kesebir, 2017), our society has drifted away from the benefits of nature such as increased happiness and vitality to reduced fatigue, studies even show that patients who had plants in their hospital room required less pain killers than those without. Studies indicate a significant decline in human-nature interactions, emphasizing the need for a renewed connection. Our generation has the opportunity to harness technology to promote environmental consciousness and sustainable practices, bridging the gap between humanity and the natural world.
In order to understand how I might approach a solution to declining human-nature interactions, I began with a combination of market research and literature review. To define the scope of my project, I looked into trending sustainability practices. I found that urban areas with limited green spaces exhibit a higher demand for applications that promoting connection to nature and sustainable practices, and according to accountability.org planting was among the most popular sustainability trends of 2023. My next goal was to determine interests, frustrations, and opportunities that would guide the solutions in my design to support a deeper connection between people and the natural world.
Problem: One problem of existing planting themed mobile applications was a lack of comprehensive general plant and plant care information
Solution: Making digestible interfaces that are also comprehensive, so that users never have to exit Planter to compensate
Problem: Users of plant themed applications also left negative comments about the lack of user generated content and community engagement
Solution: Building engaging community experiences that allow users to post content, share knowledge, and empower sustainability
Problem: The third most common frustration was a lack of personalized recommendations and general poor experience searching for plants
Solution: Prioritizing intuitive interfaces and architecture that integrates seamless recommendations based on user information
In order to synthesize the overwhelming amount of data collected about my users during the research phase, I use a user persona to represent key audience segments. This step allows me to define the scope and focus of my solution, addressing the specific needs of my most important user groups.
After extensive research into the problem space, I begin my ideation phase by sketching. Paper and pen design allows me to quickly view my ideas before I commit to creating anything digital that would take more time to create with the risk of having to redesign.
Following the rigorous research phase and narrowing down the solution, I began wireframing lo-fi prototypes to translate my insights and solutions into tangible features, laying the foundation for user interaction.
This is the first screen that a user would see. We introduce our vision and mission statement as well as the value proposition for the user, keeping the UI tidy and simple and leaving the CTA linear.
On the Plant Finder page, users are able to browse for plants based on the sunlight requirements, watering schedule, and overall difficulty of care. All plants are organized in helpful categories and include images, common name, and scientific name.
Once users begin adding plants based on their preferences, it will automatically append to a sample watering schedule. They'll be able to easily print this calendar out so that they have a handy reminder of when to water their new plants.
Based on research, we decided to add an open forum for all users. It includes handy filters that users can use to filter posts by as well as affordances for the users engagement such as commenting, liking, or saving posts.
Users have the option to include images, select filters, and modify typography when creating posts so that they can better express themselves.
My first step in development was to translate my Figma design mock ups into static pages using HTML and CSS
After creating static pages, I added logic to my code using JavaScript. This included making event listeners, logical code changes, and responsive media design
After finishing my HTML, CSS, and JavaScript development, I quickly changed the code into React to create components and organize my code.
The last step in my code was adding a database to store and to read information, and then deploying the website.
While working on this project I was able to deliver a functional website and see my project end-to-end. Because of time constraints, I had to trust my research and continue development without any user research, heavily relying on my user persona to empathize with my stakeholders. I believe the solution I created was a great answer to the human-nature deficit, and would still today be a viable and engaging solution. If I had more time, I would conduct user testing and add more nice to have features for my stakeholders to set my solution further apart from competitors.
Product design project empowering C-section patients, winning 80k grant
UX/UI Internship where I built the main website and featured project
A collection of projects from work, school, and personal experience
