I-Plant - A Digital Platform for Plant Care
Embedded Files
Timeline
Mar 2024 - Apr 2024
(8 Weeks)
Role
UX/UI Designer
UX Researcher
Deliverable
Website and Mobile App
Platform
Figma
Project Vision
I-Plant is a digital platform (Available as both a responsive website and mobile app) that helps users care for their houseplants with ease. The platform allows users to identify plants, schedule care routines, diagnose plant health issues, and receive personalized reminders to stay on top of plant maintenance.
This project began as a responsive web design, developed as part of the Google UX Design Certificate Program. Based on feedback from usability testing, I expanded the platform into both desktop and mobile versions to better meet users' needs and address key pain points in their plant care journey.
Challenges as UX/UI Designer
◆ Help users accurately identify their plants—especially if they don’t know the species.
◆ Provide easy-to-understand, plant-specific care instructions tailored to each plant's needs.
◆ Allow users to create flexible care routines and receive reminders for tasks like watering, fertilizing, and repotting.
◆ Enable users to detect and diagnose common plant health problems, and suggest actionable solutions.
Design Process
🙋 Empathize
User Research Summary
The inspiration for I-Plant came from a personal challenge: as a plant enthusiast, I enjoyed collecting new plants, but many of them didn’t survive due to my lack of proper care knowledge. This personal experience helped shape the core problem I wanted to solve—making plant care easier and more accessible for everyday users.
To better understand user needs, I applied a goal-directed design approach, developing two primary personas with distinct challenges:
◆ John – a dormitory student who struggles to diagnose and treat his sick plant
◆ Jason – a busy young father who needs the simplest, most efficient way to manage plant care for the whole family
Personas
These personas reflect a wide range of user goals and frustrations, which helped define the core experiences for I-Plant:
◆ Plant identification and diagnosis
◆ Care schedule customization
◆ Timely reminders and easy-to-follow instructions
These insights revealed clear opportunities to improve the plant care experience through intuitive, educational, and supportive design features for the development of I-Plant.
Jason's Journey Map
After creating user personas, I mapped out a User Journey Map of Jason to better understand the key steps, emotions, and pain points involved in identifying and caring for a houseplant.
Goal: Identify and take care of his plant
🎯 Define
Defining Pain Points
Based on insights gathered from user personas and Jason's Journey Map, I identified four core pain points that reflect the main challenges users face in their plant care routines:
💡 Ideate
Potential Ideas
After completing the Empathize and Define phases, I translated the key user pain points into solution-oriented features that would guide the product’s design direction.
User Flow
After identifying user needs and generating solution-driven ideas, I developed a User Flow to map out the end-to-end experience. This flow outlines how users interact with the website to search for their plants, schedule care tasks, complete routine or special care, and diagnose plant health issues. It helps ensure that the navigation is intuitive, task-focused, and aligned with real user goals.
Information Architecture
I created an Information Architecture to outline the overall structure of the website. This helped visualize how users would navigate through key features such as scheduling plant care, diagnosing plant issues, and exploring additional tools derived from potential solution ideas. The architecture ensures a logical, user-centered flow that supports ease of use and discoverability across the website.
Competitive Audits
I analyzed several popular plant care apps from the App Store to understand how they address user needs. Most of these apps solve only one or two key pain points identified in my research with the exception of Planta, which offers a more complete experience. However, even Planta is limited to mobile use, leaving room for I-Plant to stand out as a fully responsive platform accessible via both mobile and desktop.
Each competitor provides useful features that inspired improvements for I-Plant, while also revealing market gaps that my design can uniquely address.
Key features across competitor apps:
◆ All of the competitors are a dedicated mobile app, None offer a responsive website version
◆ Identify plants using a photo
◆ Offer plant care guidelines and reminders
◆ Allow users to customize care tasks per plant
◆ Enable plant collection tracking
◆ Diagnose plant issues through photo-based analysis
These insights provide a foundation for positioning I-Plant as a more holistic, flexible, and accessible plant care solution.
✍️ Low-Fidelity Prototype
Paper Wireframe
To begin the design process, I created a series of paper wireframes for the homepage of the website, following the structure laid out in the user flow and information architecture. I explored multiple layout variations to experiment with different content arrangements and interactions.
After reviewing and refining my sketches, I selected a single-column layout with a side navigation bar, prioritizing simplicity and clarity. This layout was best suited to support the core user tasks while keeping the interface clean and intuitive. I then adapted the design across different devices: desktop, tablet, and mobile to ensure full responsiveness and consistent user experience across platforms.
Digital Wireframe and Low-Fidelity Prototype for Website
After finalizing the paper wireframes, I moved on to designing digital wireframes in Figma, focusing on two key formats: desktop website and mobile phone. I began with the website version, translating the hand-drawn concepts into structured digital layouts.
As I progressed through the user flow, I saw an opportunity to improve the homepage design. I switched from the original layout to a tiered “layer cake” structure, which allowed for distinct content sections in each horizontal band of the page—making it easier to organize information and guide users smoothly through the interface.
Each screen in the user flow was digitally built and linked together to form a low-fidelity interactive prototype, enabling early usability testing and feedback before moving into high-fidelity design.
Low-Fidelity Prototype for Mobile Device Version
After completing the low-fidelity prototype for the website, I adapted the design to a mobile device format to ensure a responsive and consistent user experience across different screen sizes. Although the mobile version has a more compact layout, it maintains the same core user flows to the website is responsive.
📋 Test
Usability Study
I conducted a moderated usability study with 5 Participants in a 25 - 30 minute session (5 males interested in plants or with landscape design backgrounds, ages between 20 and 30). I used a website version of a low-fidelity prototype for this usability study.
The Research Goal is to determine if users can complete core tasks within the low-fidelity prototype of the plant care website, which a searching for a plant, scheduling plant care, and diagnosing a plant issue. Determine if the Plantcare website is difficult to use for improvement before moving on to the visuals.
Research Insights
After the usability study, I organized data into research insights and prioritized those insights from the most urgent to the least urgent.
Refining the Design
After the test process, I iterated my low-fidelity prototype based on the insights I gained from the usability study and developed the app for the final work.
🖥️ High-Fidelity Prototype
Mockups and High-Fidelity Prototype
After refining the low-fidelity prototype based on user feedback, I developed detailed mockups and assembled them into a high-fidelity prototype. This version incorporates complete user flows and interactive features that directly address the key pain points identified during research and usability testing.
Based on insights from the usability study, I expanded I-Plant into a responsive desktop website and mobile application. This dual-platform approach allows users to conveniently schedule plant care tasks on the desktop and receive timely reminders through the mobile app ensuring a seamless and effective plant care experience across devices.
CHALLENGE 1
Plant Identification
I-Plant enables users to identify their plants even if they don’t know the name. By simply upload a photo, users can scan their plant, and I-Plant will recognize it and provide the plant’s name along with detailed care instructions. This feature makes plant identification quick, easy, and accessible for everyone, especially beginners.
The mobile app version enhances this experience by allowing users to take photos instantly using their phone camera. This makes it even easier to identify plants on the go, whether at home, in a garden, or while exploring outdoors. Users can also search by plant name directly from the app for faster results.
CHALLENGE 2
Plant Care
Once a plant is identified or selected, I-Plant provides users with clear, concise information on how to care for each plant, users receive tailored care tips such as watering frequency, sunlight requirements, ideal temperature, and fertilizing schedules. The guidance is designed to be beginner-friendly while still useful for experienced plant owners.
CHALLENGE 3
Schedule and Reminder
On each plant’s information page, users can add their plant to the website to create a personalized care schedule for basic tasks like watering. After adding the plant, users can later customize the schedule by including additional actions such as fertilizing, misting, pruning, or repotting. This allows flexibility for users to build a care plan that fits their plant’s unique needs over time.
Once a plant is added, it will appear on the website homepage under “Today’s Tasks,” making it easy for users to see which plants need care each day. Plants are categorized by room—such as kitchen, living room, or balcony—allowing users to complete tasks efficiently based on their space.
Each plant entry also links back to its full information page, allowing users to review care details and receive step-by-step instructions for that day’s tasks—for example, how to water properly or the right method for pruning.
The same features are available in the mobile app version. Users can easily manage their plant care on the go and receive timely notifications and reminders directly on their phones, making daily care simple and accessible.
◆ Add Schedule on the App
◆ Today Tasks on the App
CHALLENGE 4
Diagnosis
I-Plant enables users to diagnose plant issues by entering the plant’s name or uploading a photo, selecting the affected part of the plant (such as leaves or roots), and visible symptoms.
Based on this input, I-Plant suggests possible problems along with clear solutions and prevention tips to help users take corrective action quickly.
This diagnosis flow is also available on the mobile app version, allowing users to easily identify and resolve plant issues anytime, anywhere. The app makes it simple to snap a photo of a struggling plant and receive helpful advice immediately.
Design System
For the I-Plant project, I selected Viridian Green (#417B5A) as the primary color to reflect the essence of plants and nature. This rich, calming green sets a natural tone and reinforces the theme of plant care. To complement it, I curated a palette of supporting colors that enhance visual harmony and maintain a balanced, approachable aesthetic.
◆ Colors
◆ Typography for Website : SF Pro Display
◆ UI Components for Website
I began by designing UI components for the website version, ensuring a clean, intuitive layout. Once finalized, I adapted these components into a compact and responsive mobile app interface, maintaining consistency while optimizing for smaller screens.
◆ Typography for App : SF Pro Display
◆ UI Components for App
Key Takeaways
I-Plant is my second project in the Google Certified Program and my first time designing a responsive website. As with my previous project, I chose a topic I’m personally passionate about—houseplants—and created a platform to help users diagnose plant issues and manage plant care effectively.
Through this project, I discovered the impact of user research in shaping design decisions. I developed two user personas based on my own experiences, and by identifying their pain points, I was able to go beyond the basic scope of the course and define meaningful features for the platform. After building the low-fidelity prototype, I conducted a usability study, which revealed a strong user preference for a mobile app to complement the website. This feedback led me to design both a desktop website and a mobile phone application, ensuring a smoother and more accessible user experience.
This project has been a major learning experience and has helped me significantly improve my UX design skills. However, there are still areas for growth in the next phase:
◆ Conduct follow-up usability testing on the updated website and app
◆ Carry out additional user research to uncover new opportunities for improvement
◆ Design a smartwatch notification system for plant care reminders
◆ Enhance the diagnosis feature to allow integration with the plant care schedule
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