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Connect Rare Seeds with a potential untapped market, urban gardeners, by providing a wealth of knowledge via a well thought out ios mobile app.
Amanda Kent, Vivian Huynh, myself
Help Rare Seeds connect with a pretty big chuck of their potential market — urban gardeners. Give urban gardeners the knowledge & data they need for gardening success when starting out. Provide a community for experienced green thumbs to share their tips and tricks. Offer an app specifically to meet the needs of urban gardeners, so that they experience gardening success and become lifelong gardeners.
We chose this method to see how others were approaching both of the subjects that were offered by some competitors.
We chose this method to observe current market trends, and changing customer preferences. We aimed to identify new opportunities to innovate and meet evolving customer demands.
I chose this method to connect with that potential missing audience and put myself in their shoes.
My chosen in-person research method was to establish a connection with a potential audience that may have been overlooked. The decision to visit a vermicompost workshop organized by Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) was motivated by the desire to get hands-on experience and interact face-to-face on their soil and experience their perspective firsthand.
By joining the workshop, I connected with urban gardeners, gained valuable insights, practical knowledge, and tangible benefits. In this case, walking away with fresh green onions served as a bonus, providing a tangible reminder of the end goal for some urban gardeners, something to eat.
Immersing myself in the garden and actively participating, I can help the team develop more accurate and meaningful insights to inform future decision-making and design processes.
Interviewee criteria was set to gather a wide range of empathy from users.
We chose this method to hear firsthand accounts of what it’s like to be an urban gardener.
Our C&C analyses, interviews & in the field research helped us dig up some insightful trends.
Based on our affinity mapping we were able to craft two distinct personas that spoke to the needs and goals of our interviewees.
In order to further empathize with the users we created retrospective journey maps for both users to help visualize the emotional turbulence one could go through from the trials and tribulations of gardening.
To illustrate how we’ve kept the user at the center of our designs we show the prospective journeys of our personas would be affected with the help of our app.
The new mobile app accompaniment to RareSeeds could serve as a wealth of information and community, as well as a convenient way to purchase seeds online. We have expanded Rare Seed’s target audience to a growing demographic – the urban farmer. This expansion could provide a solution to both Dawn and Brad’s problems. For the beginner like Dawn, this app could present a single source of organized information on how to start her compact herb garden, and how to keep it alive and thriving. For the more intermediate gardener like Brad, the Rare Seeds app could supply him with an outlet to seek help within the local gardening community when it comes to those new outdoor issues.
After the culmination of our research we began to form some ideas by doing crazy 8s and then a design studio session. After a few ideations we put together the best ideas and sketched as a team. We would carefully go through feature ideas informed by our research and combine the best of our individual sketches to end up with something we were all satisfied with.
My team was nothing short of amazing, working tirelessly to fly through the wireframing stage. We were able to communicate the research thoughtfully through our designs.
If we had more time we would’ve loved to continue adding the features suggested in usability tests.
Searching - Improving search keywords for plants and seed info
USDA Plant Zones - Geo tagging to figure out users USDA Plant Zone
Plant Care - Adding more location based plant care tips and tricks from the community
