PROBLEM
The nursery is an independent family run nursery that sells exclusively native plants to customers in the mid-Atlantic region. Without a current online presence or e-commerce site, they are looking to scale their in-person business online.
SOLUTION
Our team of three were challenged to create the brand identity for the business as well as a high-fidelity prototype for their responsive e-commerce platform. We also conceptualized a mobile companion app.
MY ROLE
UX Lead - UI Design
TIMEFRAME
3 weeks
KEY METHODS & TOOLS
Agile Methodology, User Research, Branding, Design Studio, Rapid Prototyping, Figma
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Jumping In
First things first: understanding the business and problem space. What are native plants? Native plants are those that are native to where you live: plants that have long lived and thrived in your region and climate. Local pollinators and animals need their native plants as the foundation of their ecosystem. Less native plants, less native butterflies, bees, hummingbirds, etc.
For those with the opportunity of having a yard or garden, planting native not only looks beautiful and can be little maintenance long term, but most importantly they improve the environment and ecosystems in your yard.
We were thrilled to work on a business with such a positive impact to the environment, and were ready to start learning more and building the brand.
User Research
The team conducted 11 user interviews, ages ranging from 20-70 to learn the needs of gardeners of all experience levels. Through our testing, we aimed to understand the following questions:
1. What do they feel their experience level is with gardening?
2. How do they currently purchase plants? How do they feel about online purchases?
3. If buying a group of plants for a landscape, would they be interested in a curated set that was preselected? Do they prefer to customize themselves?
4. How important are native plants to them?
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
When synthesizing the feedback, we started to see some themes.
FINAL INSIGHTS
From our user research, we summarized the following insights from our test participants. We kept these in mind when moving through the next stages of the design process.
Final insights from our user interviews.
Branding
Our client came to us questioning whether her working name, "Monarch Nursery" really reflected the brand as she hoped. Once we had a better understand of the user needs during our user research session, we were ready to move into branding exercises that resulted in the following brand adjectives:
THE NAME
Through our research, we uncovered that users preferred a name that was more associated with earthiness, balance, and joy. All of this led to our team presenting the name Grounded Nursery as the new company name.
We believe that Grounded Nursery encapsulates the intangible feeling of being anchored, and in sync with the natural world around us.
MOOD BOARD
The brand's visual identity was inspired by natural colors and organic shapes. This visualized the gentle, earthy, and balanced theme that we intended the brand to reflect.
Moodboard for the Nursery.
STYLE TILE
The typography reinforces a sense of polish and professionalism. The logo is a sleek handwritten font that carries the theme of organic and earthy.
Ideation
SKETCHING
After conducting the research, we began to ideate first using sketches, and then moving on to wireframes.
The main features our sketches presented were:
- A package selection quiz, offering a less intimidating entry point for beginner gardeners to allow experts to match them with the right landscape for their needs.
- A resource library, which offers continued learning on how to ensure success for your landscape.
- A dedicated section for native plants to educate users on the important of native plants and their impact on ecosystems.
Wireframes designed in Figma.
TESTING
We conducted 4 usability tests on the wireframes, with an additional 5 tests following the revision and creation of high-fidelity mockups.
We found the following:
- Confusion about the size of the plant: We found users were still unclear on exactly what stage they’d receive plants (i.e - as seedlings vs as mature plants), as well as the significance of native plants.
- Trusted Site: Users felt confident in our process and 100% of testers said they would trust buying plants on the site.
- General Edits: We found some typos, broken links, and all the usual wireframe type mistakes.
Along with brushing up content, we resolved #1 by revising terminology on the homepage to be more transparent about how the plants arrive, as well as adding an entirely new section to our native plants page. There were separate pages for learning about the growing and shipping processes, which users received well but initially had difficulty finding.
Introducing, Grounded Nursery
Click around the hi-fidelity prototype here, or view the walkthrough video below.
TRUSTWORTHY
The homepage offers an immediate canvas to start learning. A walk through of the "Grounded Nursery Journey" sets the customers expectations right from the beginning: users that they will be receiving seedlings in their curated box purchase which they plant themselves.
OUR STORY
This page houses the Grounded Community story. We have a short version of the client's story, but we believe that this is a canvas for the client to build trust with their users. Photos of the greenhouse depict exactly where the plants are grown, to show users that their new plants are taken care of every step of the way.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLANTING NATIVE
Native plants are a pillar of this business, so we include a page to detail just how important and incredible native plants are.
GROWING & SHIPPING PROCESS
To address concerns surfaced during user interviews about buying plants online and having them arrive in good condition, we designed separate pages to detail both processes. Our goal is that transparency about these processes builds trust with the user, and could convince a hesitant user with reservations about buying plants onlineto feel safe doing so with Grounded Nursery.
QUIZ
Once defining a user segment who is new to native plants or landscaping in general through our user research, we designed a simple to suggest a curated landscape based on their needs. The quiz asks about the user's garden attributes, while offering opportunity for users to learn about attributes that they're not quite certain about (with the information icon and flyouts).
RESOURCES & COMMUNITY
This is a hub for the client to post how-to videos, and offer gardening resources.
Coming into this project, the client was only focused on the beginning of the user journey, converting clients. As a team, we noticed that there was opportunity in maintaining Grounded Nursery customers and keep them active long after buying their landscape.
After researching how active plant community groups can be, we suggested a self sustaining Facebook group where mid-atlantic native plant lovers can share tips, ask advice, and build a virtual community.
Next Steps
From here, there are still a few points to vet before moving to the development of this web application:
01. Branding: We want to make sure the name is not only something that makes sense for the brand, but something that Kait and her team LOVES.
02. Refining information: Fill in information overlays, and background information on the company’s story
03. Validation of Features: Doing another test past of features to ensure they are optimized for the user.
04. Understand the environmental story of the company: After learning more about users who would be interested in Grounded nursery and native plants, we believe that a large portion of them would also care about other environmental concerns. We recommend an analysis of shipping materials, and shipping methods so that users feel good about helping their environment in a multitude of ways
05. Our story: We loved the story of Kait working with her husband, so we would recommend leaning into that story a bit more to make the company more personal.
06. Package sizing: Lastly, we would suggest that there be variable size packages, maybe even small or large, so that there are packages for those with smaller landscapes that they want to fill.
FINAL THOUGHTS
We are proud of the work we’ve presented, and defend the validation of need for Monarch/Grounded Nursery. There is interest for gardeners of varying ages, and experiences, to DIY their landscape and feel good about contributing to their ecosystem. We hope that the nursery continues to design a platform that uplifts users, while cultivating a community that cares about the Earth’s longevity. We have conceptualized and designed two supporting platforms for users to be successful in this goal, and to further Monarch Nursery’s mission.