SPROUTED
Greenfield Mobile App
A greenfield project to develop a mobile app helping beginner hydroponic farmers monitor their plants and educate themselves on the process.
Product Design
-
Side Project
My role:
UX/UI desiger
Timeline:
3 months
The team:
3 UX/UI designers
Problem
Despite the rapid growth of the U.S. hydroponics market, many plant enthusiasts struggle to effectively manage and optimize plant growth in hydroponic systems.
Solution
An innovative hydroponic education app can bridge this knowledge gap, empowering individuals to successfully engage in hydroponic gardening, reduce their food costs, and better understand and utilize plant monitoring tools for future generations.
Results
We successfully prototyped a mobile app with the ability to educate and display pH data on produce based on a hardware sensor within a 3 month timespan.
Play with the MVP prototype here →
Process
TEAM
An ex-filmmaker, a marketer and a visual designer walk into a room.. to build a hydoponics education app! Both Taylor and Renee are based in CA while I am based in HI.
Taylor Z.
UX/UI Designer
Renee V.
UX/UI Designer
May S. (me!)
UX/UI Designer
STRATEGY
I led a 1hr brainstorming workshop with 2 other students who were aspiring UX/UI designers. We began by thinking through and drafting some key ideas to test:

What kind of users need to manage and optimize hydroponic systems?
- Local distributers
- Traveling truckers
- Private homes/HOAsSchools with gardening/sustainability programs

What what key screens are necessary to meet this need?
Core Loop – Physical sensor collects data -> farmer views sensor data on an app -> farmer maintains their produce health

After determining our direction, I guided the team in distributing tasks based on each member's strengths.
PERSONA: RAUL THE RESTAURANTEUR

Considering our possible users we curated 3 personas but soon realized each would have significantly different needs from the app.

‍

In the end, we focused on Rahul because of his ability to relate to the problem statement of food cost and gardening interest the best.



‍

He’s an aspiring restaurateur committed to incorporating hydroponic farming into his culinary practices because he wants to reduce the cost of his ingredients and is a plant-enthusiast.


PIVOTING FROM PERSONA TO REDDIT

Recognizing our limited access to hydroponic experts and a tight project timeline, we pivoted to interviewing knowledgeable contacts within our network & Reddit threads instead.

‍

We conducted 4 live interviews and read through 20+ messages across 3 Reddit Threads and found that they..


  1. Want an easy way to track data on their produce
  2. Want to learning more about how to maximize their yield
AN ASIDE:
HARDWARE INFORMS SOFTWARE

As we progressed into the design phase, I sketched out the hardware component to inform user flow before translating these concepts into lofi wireframes in Figma.

‍

Sensor considerations:

  • How many sensors per plant?
  • How would they know which plant is matched to which sensor?
  • What data do these sensors collect?

To simplify our MVP, we decided on:

  • 1 sensor per plant
  • Labels on the hardware would match to a specific plant on the app
  • Sensor data would collect: moisture levels, pH and water temp
This is some text inside of a div block.
WIREFRAMES

I mapped out the core loop for a hydroponics student like Rahul. With our app, he can:

  • Get a high level view of his crops
  • Get detailed information about a specific crop
  • Learn tips about hydroponics

Future features to be fully built out:

  • Search for specific crops
  • Get alerts about crops in decline
  • Get alerts about unresponsive sensor
  • Complete learning courses about hydroponic systems
DESIGN SYSTEM TRAINING

My teammate Taylor found a color palette that resonates with the agricultural industry, and I collaborated with him to train him on using Auto Layout in Figma, applying the branding through design components.


Core elements:

  • Icons
  • ColorTypography
  • Re-usable components (cards, trackers, status icons)
Reflection
RESULTS

Design a mobile prototype for plant-enthusiasts/cost-savers to monitor, grow and learn about their hydroponic farming systems.

Play with the MVP prototype here →
WHAT WENT WELL

Project Management – Taking the lead and managing deadlines for project milestones allowed us to complete the project within 3 months.

 
IF I HAD 6 MORE MONTHS..

UI/UX

  • Introduce more white space and less color to clean up the UI.
  • Design UX flow for other sensor data (eg, moisture & water temperature)
    • I'd benchmark 70% loss or less of daily active users (DAU) within first 3 days of app installation (industry average for mobile apps lose 77% DAU - Source)
  • Conduct a survey on what kind of content users want to see in the Course portion of our app.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Consider a revenue models: creating a subscription to the app.

  • ex. 3 sensor data free, 4-10 sensors $25 mo/subscription, 10+ sensors $50 mo/subscription.
  • ex. Paid accounts will have in-depth features like: alerts and access to all learning courses.
WORKABOUT MAYRESUMÉ
Currently searching for my next full-time role!
Let's connect!