Roots App Case Study Copy
User Research and Design for The Root App
The Problem
As plant parents ourselves, we know firsthand how frustrating it can be to tend to a houseplant in which you’ve invested your money and time only to have it begin to wilt and wither away without ever fully understanding what you did wrong or how you could have saved your plant.
Am I watering enough? Am I watering too much? Why are the leaves yellow? What are these little black winged bugs crawling all around in the soil? Is this the right soil? Wait…what kind of plant do I even have?
JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU NEED, LITTLE PLANT!!!
What if….
What if your plant COULD talk to you? What if you knew EXACTLY what your plant needed and when it needed it.
Does anything like that currently exist? Is there an app for that? Maybe some kind of sensor that you could put in your pot that communicated that information to you…
Turns out, yeah… that does exist. Bummer. However, users seem frustrated with both the sensors and the apps, finding them untrustworthy and failing to deliver on promised features . We wondered, “Where do these apps fall short? How might we better serve users by providing them with a source that gave them trustworthy answers they need along with the reliable customer service they deserve?”
Team Members
Aaron Lord, Amber Spencer
Tools Used:
Procreate, Figma, Typeform, Miro
The Solution
The Root App solves the problems users find in other apps with the following features:
Sensors deliver to Hub (Home Base) near wireless router, and Hub delivers to you information regardless of your location
Reliability
Ease of functionality
Intuitiveness
Friendly and Fun Tone
Specific and In Depth Detail, Instructions and Recommendations and Plant Database
Relevant Plant List to Your Plant Zone and Area
Dependable Customer Service
Notification System — User defines how often they get notifications and to what level of care they want to commit
Research
We began our research by creating a Proto Persona. What type of person do we feel cares enough about their indoor plants that they would invest even more time and even money into an app and sensors to better take care of those plants? What pain points might this person have? What could we do to solve those pain points?
Research Plan
As user researchers, we wanted to understand what indoor plant enthusiasts currently do to maintain their plants, what resources they use to educate themselves about plant care and what information do they struggle finding answers?
Objective 1: How do users currently gather information about plant care?
Objective 2: Which problems in plant care are most common?
Objective 3: What issues exist that they struggle finding answers?
Objective 4: What products do they currently use to monitor their plants?
Objective 5: How much would a user pay to have a sensor that communicated answers to these problems?
Interview Plan
We created an interview plan based off of the objectives we wanted to learn through our interviews.
- Are you currently caring for indoor house plants?
- What type of plants do you currently own?
- What do you find interesting about your plants?
- What are the most common problems you run into with your plant care, and how do you research answers to your questions?
- What issues exist that you struggle finding answers?
- What types of products do you currently use to monitor or care for your plants?
- How would you feel if your plant could communicate its needs directly to you?
- How much would you pay to have a sensor that communicates answers to those problems?
Survey
After creating an interview plan, we conducted interviews and posted an online survey inspired by the interview plan. We did our survey through Typeform and shared it in two Reddit houseplant forums, gifting us even more insight specifically from plant hobbyists.
Competitive Analysis Matrix
Additional research came in the form of a competitive analysis matrix in which we compared competitors’ advantages, strengths, weaknesses, reviews and opportunities for us to meet the needs of users where current apps fall short.
Gained Insight
Objective 1: How do users currently gather information about plant care?
We learned users typically use online free resources like Reddit forums, Google searches, Pinterest or YouTube. They may go to a local nursery or library to problem solve, or they may just reach out to friends and family.
Objective 2: Which problems in plant care are most common?
The complaints of plant care are very universal. Users struggle diagnosing disease and treating it. Similarly, pests are hard to identify and treat. Proper watering, lighting, pruning and finding the “perfect spot” for the plant to thrive were all repetitive problems we heard throughout our interviews. Many just couldn’t identify exactly where things went wrong, and some weren’t even sure what type of plant they even had.
Objective 3: What issues exist that they struggle finding answers?
Users complained that though they could purchase sensors, they would have to be right next to the plant for the app to communicate with the sensor, making it very inconvenient. If a user had multiple sensors, they were unable to rename their sensors, thereby it was difficult for them to identify which sensor they were reading data from. Users complained that they were not getting responses from developers when they reviewed the apps, and some hadn’t been updated in years. Many complained of incorrect plant identifications, redundant and unexpected fees, and no way to save the information they researched. The most common theme between user struggles was the next to nonexistent customer service.
Objective 4: What products do they currently use to monitor their plants?
We learned that apps users currently use to monitor their plants are apps like Planta, Picture This and Plant Identification ++. Many don’t use apps to monitor their plants but spend countless hours trying to do the hard work of research for themselves.
Objective 5: How much would a user pay to have a sensor that communicated answers to these problems?
We found users differed on their responses to this question. Serious hobbyists would spend up to $20 a month on an app that provided reliable feedback, stating that if the sensors were included in that package for free, it would cause them to be more likely to subscribe for a year or more. Some, however, would rather not pay a subscription and would rather pay $30 for a set of sensors and use the app for free.
Hypothesis Statement
We believe that by providing a resource to help educate, plan, design, buy, place, diagnose, monitor and maintain plants for all levels of plant enthusiasts, The ROOT app will help empower plant caregivers to feel more knowledgable, more successful & more confident.
The ROOT app was designed to help users monitor the needs of their plants. We observed that other products have not been meeting users’ needs, which is causing a lack of trust from users in regard to these monitoring devices. How might we improve upon products so that our customers are successful based on: Reviews/Sensors Purchased?
As mentioned above, these are the qualifiers that we hope would make our app more user focused and beneficial:
Sensors deliver to Hub (Home Base) near wireless router, and Hub delivers to you information regardless of your location
Reliability
Ease of functionality
Intuitiveness
Friendly and Fun Tone
Specific and In Depth Detail, Instructions and Recommendations and Plant Database
Relevant Plant List to Your Plant Zone and Area
Dependable Customer Service
Notification System — User defines how often they get notifications and to what level of care they want to commit
User Insight
Priority Matrix
Empathy Map
User Journey Map
User Flow
Sketches and Wireframes
Lo Fi Clickable Prototype
We made a lo fi clickable prototype after iterations using our wireframe sketches.
Final Mid Fi Wireframes
Final Mid Fi Clickable Prototype
The result of all of our research and sketching was this final mid fi prototype.
Summary
We realized we need further using testing and need to streamline the app flow more. We have considered combining the home and profile pages because a lot of the content is similar. We also need to further fine tune the plant diagnosis submittal.
