Plant-Fairy

Introduction

Plant Fairy is an app plant owners can use to monitor and take care of their plants remotely and in person. It has three features:

• Greenhouse: Display plants that have linked to their app. Each plant may have an exclamation symbol to indicate it needs attention and a link symbol to suggest that it's linked to a device.

• Plant Academy: A page for plant owners to learn about their plants from articles written by credible people. Each article lists the history of plant and plant care practices. Also, each article has a quiz that users can use to test what they have learned.

• Plant Community: A place for plant owners to discuss, share concerns, and provide support. It is similar to Reddit; users can upvote/downvote posts, reply to comments/posts and add tags to posts. The credibility of a user's response or post on the form is based on whether they have a plant care badge.

Try Out Plant Fairy

Demo of using the app: Plant Fairy Demo

To try out the high-fidelity prototype of the app: Plant Fairy Protype

Problem Statment

Plant owners with a busy lifestyle and minimal plant care experience want an easy and efficient way to identify issues with their indoor houseplants’ health and receive assistance with adapting their care practices to the unique needs of each plant.

Formative Studies

We conducted questionnaires and interviews to understand the problem better. Based on the formative studies, we developed the persona of a plant owner.

Figure 1: Plant owner persona

Also, based on our findings, we created an experience map to help us develop job stories and design requirements.

Figure 2: Houseplant Owner Experience Map

Design Concepts and Prototypes

After brainstorming possible solutions to the problem, we finalized a solution that drew from the advantages of each solution. We created high and low-level storyboards to demonstrate how planter owners will use and interact with our app.

High-Level Storyboard

Figure 3: Plant Owners use Plant Fairy to identify when their plant's health is declining, what the cause is, and to fix the issue by interacting with the hardware devices through the app or fixing them themselves.

Low-Level Storyboard

Figure 4: User registration and plant setup screen-level storyboard. For a larger version, click here.

Figure 5: Device registration and linking to a plant. For a larger version,click here.

Paper Prototype

Figure 6: Paper prototype screens for when users try to access a plant and take care of it from the app. For this set of screens, all necessary devices required for care are added. For a larger, higher quality image, click here.

Evaluvation of Low Fideltiy Prototype

We evaluated our paper prototype by conducting think-aloud and heuristic evaluations.

Think Aloud

Some of the context/tasks provided to the participant in the think-aloud section are:

• Task: Register and Add A Plant Imagine that you are a plant owner, and you are seeking to improve your plant care routine and practices. You expect to learn more about the plant you currently own. Now, I would like you to show me how you would add a snake plant to this app. Feel free to explore the interface as you see fit.

• Task: Remedy Plant Issues Via App + Hardware Imagine that you are a plant owner, and you are seeking to use plant-care tools to improve your plant-care practices. You expect to be able to adjust water and light levels through the app. Assume all plant hardware has already been added to the plant and app.Now, I would like you to show me how you would water the plant through the app. Then, I would like you to show me how you would adjust light levels through the app. Feel free to explore the interface as you see fit.

• Task: Interact with Other Plant Owners Imagine that you are a plant owner, and you are seeking other plant owners to connect with on best practices and tips. Now, I would like you to show me how you would engage with other plant owners through the Plant Community discussion forum. Specifically, please show me how you would interact with an existing post (i.e., view, comment). Feel free to explore the interface as you see fit.

Heuristic Evaluvation

We categorized the findings from the heuristic evaluation in terms of what heuristics they violated and the severity of the issue.

Figure 7: Heuristic Evaluation Feedback Categorization

The findings from these evaluations were taken into account to improve our prototype.

High-Fidelity Prototype and Summative Evaluation

We refined our design based on the feedback from the evaluation of the low-fidelity prototype.

Usability Testing

We recruited participants to test the usability of our high-fidelity prototype. To assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the system, we collected data by measuring the time participants took to complete tasks, gathering their feedback through comments and notes, and having them fill out a system usability scale form. Feedback from the participants in regards to Plant Fairy was:

• had a clear layout
• visually appealing and consistent design
• easy to use
• The tutorial helped them figure out how to use the app

Also, we received an average SUS score of 88.06 (excellent).

User Research Team

• Thakshajiny Mangaleswaran
• Cooper Bolinius
• Ross Magill
• Jaemi Villanueva
• Ruhani Walia
• Qiyi Zhang