Plantella

As a Fellow with Dept of Illusions, my team was hired to deliver a product concept exploration for Refinery29: designing an app that acts as a home plant companion.

Roles
Brand Design
Visual Design
UX Prototyping

Timeline
3 Weeks

USER RESEARCH

How do millennials select and care for plants?

Using media articles, existing plant applications, and the Refinery29 audience, we were able to make observations and assumptions about our target users.

Deliverable Goals

DISCOVER

Personalized recommendations
Based on environmental conditions
Living Conditions

E-COMMERCE

Provide information on:
- Plant species,
- Care requirements,
- Growth habits

EDUCATE

Teach users how to identify plants
Diagnose plant health problems
Give solutions for treatment and prevention

COMMUNITY

Share plant care tips
Ask questions
Connect with enthusiasts

TARGET AUDIENCE

Millennials yearn to take care of plants

Plantella focuses on new plant owners and existing plant enthusiasts, ensuring all questions are met with the best care tips and answers. Jenny and Carmen will be the face of the audience of Plantella.

Carmen

New to the house plant journey
Little to no knowledge about where to get started
Wants to learn before purchasing

Jenny

Familiar with some house plants
Wants to expand her collection
Interested in getting diverse plants
Wants care reminders

Refinery29's website contains a lot of articles for plant enthusiasts. Plantella should capitalize on the quantity and quality of this content to help users make decisions.

IDEATION

Designing for the User, Deliverables, and Goals

Both Jenny and Carmen like learning about plants that suit their lifestyles. This means they want to be able to figure out plant needs quickly and how to care for it if something goes wrong. Everyone likes to feel like they've got magic green thumbs. I created the flow for the Community section.

DISCOVER

"Which plant fits my personality?"

E-COMMERCE + AR

"Will this look good in
my home?"

EDUCATE

"What's wrong with my plant baby?"

COMMUNITY

"What are other people doing?"

VISUAL DESIGN

Building a Brand Design Kit

Developing a Style Guide using Refinery29's bright colour scheme. I kept the colours fun, vibrant, and approachable for a millennial audience.

REFLECTIONS

Looking Back on Key Learning Points

As I look back at my journey at Dept of Illusions and this project, I’ve had some key takeaways while working on this exercise. But first, I'd like to thank my mentor Anas for introducing me to Devin and the Illusions Coaches and providing me this opportunity to grow as a designer.

I learned how to develop a visual design branding scheme. My goals were to learn how to build a brand. Using Refinery29's website as inspiration, I used their colors and fonts to get started. Under Shannon's mentorship, I learned how to select fonts, coordinate colours, and create a gorgeous Visual Design.

An area I'd like to implement within this study is UX Research to guide the design decisions. While we were provided with a prompt and few key data figures, conducting a comparative analysis by reading user reviews between several existing plant care solutions would allow me to analyze and validate the assumptions.

Reach me at
me@lefeeza.com