Aloe from Green Our Planet

INTRODUCING ...

Aloe - a mobile app made for corporate giving programs, by using hydroponic growers with the goal of creating a tribal effect with community participation.

Duration

Apr'22 - Jul'22

Teammates

Alice Hsu

Sabrina Hsu

Kadie Despain

Project Type

Thesis Project

Tools

Figma

Miro

PowerPoint

My Role & Deliverables

Actively involved in site schematic & site audit
Conducted 2 users interviews
Interviewed the client
Determined minimum viable products
Designed user persona & journey map
Highly involved in wireframing & prototyping
Created HEART framework to measure success rate

Problem Statement

Community giving is becoming common in places like the US, with many opportunities for people and companies to donate their time and money.

Clients are clueless about the project goals themselves, not knowing what to do.

Green Our Planet, like many other organizations, are finding challenges in reaching its funding goals for school programs.

Although hydroponic growers are gaining popularity, they have not reached viral status.

✨ The Solutions ✨

Leaderboard to enhance active participation.

Plant menu to educate and promote hydroponics.

My Garden to keep track of the plants status.

We figured out the project goals together with the clients

HOW DID WE START THE PROJECT?

Since the clients aren't sure about the goal of the project, we offered to do a site schematic & audit to help them identify the underlying issues at the current website, we believed this is the best way to portray a clearer picture of what they are lacking, and what they need to improve.

Site Schematic & Site Audit Key Findings

Excessive sub-pages
Expired external links

Outdated content
Unorganized content hierarchy

Navigation is all around the places (not user-friendly)
Unreasonable amount of CTA

THE INITIAL THOUGHTS

Are we fixing current website bugs, or...?

WHAT DO WE DO NEXT? ...

We presented site schematic and site audit outcomes to the clients

The team presented the outcomes to the clients not only to tell them what are the underlying issues but also to study their reactions. As the conversation continues, we found out that the co-founder wishes to incorporate the leaderboard gamification concept into the new product.

Meet Ciara

Co-founder of Green Our Planet

It would be interesting if we could come out with something like Peloton (high-energy indoor cycling workouts). I always feel competitive as if my adrenaline is boiling every time when I see my ranking drop. I believe that's the kind of energy we need to improve users' engagement.

Based on the conversations, we concluded that:

Team Meetings

With GoP Stakeholders

GoP wish to increase their brand virality via social media promotion
GoP wish to obtain more sponsorship to support their school programs
GoP wants to improve user engagement via gamification features
GoP wants to create a new branding strategy to enhance their brand identity

GOTCHA, WHAT ABOUT ...

We create a mobile app for hydroponics growers?

ONCE WE GET A GREEN LIGHT FOR THE MOBILE APP IDEA ...

We conducted a brainstorm session internally

A good conversation always leads to more questions, the team decided to write down all possible questions and make categories accordingly.

WHAT IF ...

We create a hydroponic mobile app for the corporate giving program?

TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE OPPORTUNITIES ...

Performed secondary research to study the market opportunities

Due to time restrictions, we decided to perform secondary research based on a few topics to better justify the design opportunities.

Fund raised / year

Approximately $ 5 Billion

Longer tenure

75% employees engaged in corporate giving program

Volunteering program

71% of employee wants to volunteer in corporate program

20-25% ⬆️ in yield

Making it possible to ease world hunger issues

Water Consumption

70% of the water usage on earth goes towards traditional agriculture production

Revenue Forecast

hydroponics is foreseen to hit approximately $9.8 Billion by the year of 2028

TO IDENTIFY THE MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCTS ...

I talked to two candidates to better understand their hydroponics journey

A good conversation always leads to more questions, the team decided to write down all possible questions and make categories accordingly.

Meet Chris

A full-time teacher

I have 3 years of experience in hydroponics

I can grab the herbs I need from my garden whenever I want to

Meet Andrew

A mechanical engineer

I am confused with the lighting and nutrients for my herbs

I do love the concept but it is not easy to maintain.

I sometimes forgot about changing the water

I have a couple of small aeroponic system

Notification

I was introduced to hydroponics by my mom

User Manual

It's hard to study the pH levels needed for hydroponic plants.

BASED ON THE FINDINGS ...

How could I translate the pain points into design opportunities?

Difficulty in monitoring the hydroponics health status

User's pain points

Often forget about watering the plants

Learn how to manage hydroponics (user manual)

User's wants

Wants to get notified about the plant status

How can we make it more accessible for users to monitor their plants?

Opportunity #1

Limited funding to support the school programs

Client's pain points

Do not have channel to advocate hydroponics

Wants to improve user's engagement (gamification)

Client's wants

Wants to make hydroponics a popular trend

How can help the clients (GoP) to achieve their funding goals and at the same time advocate hydroponics?

Opportunity #2

IDEATION PROCESS ...

How could we incorporate research findings to the semi-fictional persona?

EVIDENCE-BASED USER PERSONA

I designed the primary persona - Ashton Raleigh (he/him)

Ashton says "As a new team member of Accenture, I want to be able to share my team's progress within and out of the app, so that I can visualize how we are positively impacting the community".

User Engagement

Active Participations

Immediate Feedback

Screen Shot 2022-06-22 at 11.13.13 AM.png

BASED ON ASHTON'S EXPECTATIONS ...

We determined the minimum viable products

Writing down the items we wish to include in the mobile app, it helped a lot in visualizing how realistic the idea is. We then sorted out the items based on categories such as: Must Haves, and Nice to Haves.

Must Have (part 1)

Reservoir

Planting pods

User manual

Seeds

Lights

Camera

Nutrients

Water pump

pH & TDS meters

Must Have (part 2)

Home

Profile

Settings

Navigation

Help & Support

Reminder notification

Chat box & call

Photo gallery

Nice to have

Preference quiz

Dashboard (diary)

Augmented Reality

Automatic light control

Automatic nutrient control

24/7 live support

TIME TO LAY OUT THE IDEAS ...

How can we help Ashton share his hydroponic experiences with others?

We designed a user flow for Ashton

TRANSLATING PRODUCT FEATURES TO A ROADMAP

Scenario: Ashton is a web designer at Accenture. He is competitive and health-conscious, and he is also an avid user of social media. Most of all, he loves sharing his experiences with others. Hence, the Aloe app for hydroponics is made for him!

Screen Shot 2022-07-01 at 2.09.51 PM.png

We designed wireframes

TRANSLATING ROADMAP TO SCREENS

User Story: Ashton receives a notification from the Aloe app that one of his gardens is in need of nutrients. He uses the Aloe app to order what he needs. In the meantime, he also checks the leaderboard and gets inspiration on what to grow next from the plant menu.

Screen Shot 2022-06-24 at 12.29.19 PM.png

Shopping page

Screen Shot 2022-06-24 at 12.29.05 PM.png

Data Tracker

Screen Shot 2022-06-24 at 12.29.47 PM.png

Social Media

Screen Shot 2022-06-24 at 12.29.34 PM.png

Plant Menu

High-Fidelity prototype

LOOK AT HOW ASHTON UTILIZES THE ALOE APP ...

Ashton participated in a hydroponics program with his new company - Accenture.

Achieved business goals

Achieved users' goals

My Garden

Push notification as a reminder to check the garden's health including nutrients status.
CTA: Sponsor a School!
Live view to check the plant's current situation.
Option to edit your garden.

School

We conducted a usability testing with the stakeholders via Zoom

A usability testing session was conducted with a total number of 9 internal stakeholders from different departments. Some students from other classes were also invited by the professor and were asked to give critical feedback from a professional UX perspective.

Since this is not a launched product, we decided to create a presentation slide and walk through the ideation process with the stakeholders, and do an open discussion afterwards. Here are the feedbacks we collected:

Screen Shot 2022-10-17 at 7.13.11 PM.png

Co-Founder - Ciara

"I really like the gamification idea, and I think it's really cool, I think that can really take people to engage in hydroponics, and I think we can even take that idea and put it into school programs, for example competing around the farm race market."

FEEDBACK

Founder - Kim

"So if you start to drip down to the bottom 10 in the ranking chart, would you be getting any sort of warning notification?", "What is the purpose of having a gallery icon under the navigation bar?"

FEEDBACK

Professor - Alexandre

"I will pass this to the Northeastern engineering school and see if they can continue this project by making this happen in real life."

RATING

All participants

After the presentation, we asked them to rate the project based on their overall experience with the product and presentation.

9 out of 9 stakeholders rated

WHAT CAN WE DO IN THE FUTURE? ,,,

I designed a HEART framework to measure success

The HEART framework helps us evaluate how users respond to the product features and how it brings impact the organization. I figured this would be a good metric to continue the design iteration once the product is launched.

Goals

Signals

Metrics

Engagement

For users to interact with each other via the hydroponic gamification features

Amount of active time in session
Amount of hydroponics plants
Searching for competitor's name

% of active time spent in the app
Frequencies in growing new plants
Moving frequencies in ranking

Corporate Participants

Feedback

Corporate Participants

Obtained immediate feedback in regards of the hydroponic plants status

Attend to push notifications
Check out live view features
Add plants into comparison pod

% of clicking the push notifications
No. of times checking on plants
No. of times studying plants compatibility

Virality

Increase hydroponics virality via corporate giving program

Number of sales
Accumulated school sponsors
Enhance brand identity

Sales % in hydroponic equipment
No. of sponsor receives
No. of users in total

Green Our Planet

Reflections

The team struggled for a bit to reach out to the right representative from green our planet, we were not sure about their expectation and how can we help to execute the plans. We spent almost 4 weeks trying to figure out the end goals of the project from the clients and due to time constraints, we decided to perform a site schematic and site audit to help them better understand the current underlying issues of their organization. Though eventually, we came out with a solution by incorporating the leaderboard concept into the product to increase user engagement, however, we did not have much remaining time to conduct more thorough user testing.

If I were given more time for this project, I would love to continue the user testing by interviewing corporate employees to measure their likeliness of participating in a corporate program related to hydroponics. This would be a great piece of information to further iterate the design solution from a first-time user perspective. I would also love to continue designing the social media channel (gallery button on navigation bar) to better enhance one of the project goals of increasing user engagement.