Plantiful
A social app that helps indoor gardeners solve plant problems and connect.
Role
Lead Designer
Responsibilities
UX & UI DesignProject Managements
Team
Mina H • Lead Engineer
Ronny Chiu • Product Manager & Co-founder
A social app that helps indoor gardeners solve plant problems and connect.
Role
Lead Designer
Responsibilities
UX & UI DesignProject Managements
Team
Mina H • Lead Engineer
Ronny Chiu • Product Manager & Co-founder
Indoor gardeners lack effective problem-solving on existing platforms. We aim to enable better discussion with the goal each post getting at least one answer within 24 hours, aiming to expedite problem-solving.
The Project was completed within 4 months We met our goal with each post receiving at least one answer within 24hours, effectively expediting the problem-solving process for indoor gardeners.
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“Indoor gardeners lack effective problem-solving on existing social platforms. We aim to enable better discussion with the goal each post getting at least one answer within 24 hours, aiming to expedite problem-solving”
Initially we were a little bit uncertain as to who our users will be, so we conducted surveys and several rounds of interviews, in which we Interviewed 22 Users that had varying levels of expertise and experience in the plant world. We were able to gather insights that helped us focus our efforts and understanding, some insights gained include:
Demographic:
who was our primary demographic and where they spent most of their time.
Skill levels:
wide range of expertise ; some being new, and some having 60+ plants
Plant Problems:
how people get into the hobby in the first place, and when problems arise
Solutions:
what they currently do when they have plant problems ; how they solve them
The research findings helped us pinpoint 2 user personas
Users loved forums & groups for solutions. Aside from Google (which would often lead to one of these), users would frequently go straight to a forum for help.
You are rewarded if people agree with you, not for actually helping
Example post from reddit
This is an example of a post where the top most visible comment is auser saying the problem is overwatering.However after some quick research, you discover this is 1 possibleculprit, but it could be many other reasons and the correct solutionwould involve more back and forth conversation to isolate for theissue, as it may not actually be overwatering and the poster may endup with the plant getting worse.
Nested Comments
Nested comments is the way to go to show case conversations / replies, but it needed better visualization for the nesting as opposed to a line connecting parent and child comments.
Best Comments
Should be influenced by thecommenters, but ultimately selected by the poster thatwill be using that advise.
Visibility
Best comments should be easily visible and clear, weather or not they were proven to work for the User.
This is an example of a post where the top most visible comment is auser saying the problem is overwatering.However after some quick research, you discover this is 1 possibleculprit, but it could be many other reasons and the correct solutionwould involve more back and forth conversation to isolate for theissue, as it may not actually be overwatering and the poster may endup with the plant getting worse.
Our Extensive research and competitive analysis gave us a pretty good idea how how we should approach the comment section, and so we created the following goals to ensure the design would successfully achieve the KPI we had established.
Making comments & replies easy to navigate was important, but since we are moving away from typical user voting system, we needed to implement some sort of “Credibility” system to help guide the poster to some degree, as well a way for users to “Grow”.
Make comments easy to navigate & compose
Ensure design handles many levels of nested comments / replies
Clear indicator to identify users "Credibility levels"
Create a way for the poster to Mark a comment as their preferred solution
The comment section was going to be a key part of achieving the goal since it’s how we will be facilitating discussion and ultimately helping users get the best answers possible to their problems.
We took inspiration from the other forums our users used, but went through multiple iterations to get it as ideal as possible to tik off our goals and best facilitate discussion and answers.
The comment section was going to be a key part of achieving the goal since it’s how we will be facilitating discussion and ultimately helping users get the best answers possible to their problems. We took inspiration from the other forums our users used, but went through multiple iterations to get it as ideal as possible to tik off our goals and best facilitate discussion and answers.
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We met our goal with each post receiving at least one answer within 24hours, effectively expediting the problem-solving process for indoor gardeners.
We met our goal with each post receiving at least one answer within 24hours, effectively expediting the problem-solving process for indoor gardeners.
Comment Card Iterations
The comment section was going to be a key part of achieving the goal since it’s how we will be facilitating discussion and ultimately helping users get the best answers possible to their problems.
We took inspiration from the other forums our users used, but went through multiple iterations to get it as ideal as possible to tik off our goals and best facilitate discussion and answers.