Plant Care Companion

Designing a calmer, clearer way to care for plants

This concept helps plant owners build better care habits using space-based organization and gentle reminders that fit real life.

Context

Type: Personal project (Google UX Design Certificate)
Platform: Mobile app concept
Users: Beginner and busy plant owners
Scope: Core flow + prototype v1

Problem

Plant owners often struggle to keep up with consistent plant care leading to stress when plants don’t thrive.

Inconsistent routines
Conflicting advice
Uncertainty
Guilt

Project Details

My role: UX Designer | Research | Ideation | Prototyping
Timeline: ~6 weeks (self-paced)
Team: Solo
Tools: Figma
Deliverables: Personas, journey map, pain points, hi-fi screens, clickable prototype

01. Discover

To understand how people care for their plants and where they struggle, I gathered qualitative insights from online reviews, community discussions, and AI-simulated 1:1 interviews using ChatGPT. These insights helped identify early patterns and shape my initial design direction, and I incorporated early feedback to catch usability issues and refine the flow.
Methods: Desk research + AI-simulated interviews

From this research, I summarized key patterns (insights) and translated them into specific user pain points to guide the design.

User Research | Key Insights

The patterns below shaped what the product needed to do and how it should feel.

Plant owners feel emotionally invested and guilty when plants die.

Generic advice isn’t actionable — people want guidance that fits their situation.

Conflicting information creates overwhelm and indecision.

Gentle nudges work better than strict reminders.

Visual cues help people act more than rigid schedules.

Pain Points

These pain points became the design requirements for the reminder and routine experience.

Forgetfulness in plant care

Users frequently forget to water or care for their plants due to busy schedules or lack of routine.
This highlights the need for timely, gentle reminders and personalized care notifications in the app to help build consistent habits.

Overwhelming Information

Too much technical or generalized information online leaves users confused and unsure what applies to their specific plants.
The aim is to design a simplified, tailored experience with clear, concise guidance for each plant the user owns.

Lack of Confidence

Beginners often feel unsure about how to care for specific plants, leading to hesitation or plant neglect.
This will guide us to include educational, beginner-friendly features like plant profiles, care instructions, and troubleshooting help.

Emotional Attachment

Users feel emotionally invested in their plants and experience guilt or sadness when a plant dies.
This insight pushes us to incorporate encouraging, empathetic messaging and progress tracking to support users emotionally through their plant care journey.

02. Define

Using the research insights and identified pain points, I clarified the core problem and success criteria and created synthesis artifacts to guide design decisions.

Problem Statement

Plant owners—from busy professionals to retirees—often struggle to maintain healthy plants due to forgetfulness, low confidence in their plant knowledge, and overwhelming or conflicting information online.

These challenges are amplified by guilt when plants don’t thrive. Without clear guidance and supportive routines, plant care can feel stressful instead of joyful. Users need a simple and encouraging way to stay consistent and build confidence over time.

✨ Key Problem Insights

Care tasks are easy to forget because they don’t fit into a consistent routine.
Online advice often feels too generic or inconsistent to trust in the moment.
Beginners hesitate because they aren’t sure what’s “right” for their plant.
When plants decline, guilt reduces motivation and makes care feel stressful.

Goal Statement

The goal of this project is to design a plant care companion app that helps users develop consistent, confident, and joyful plant care habits.

✨ Goals:

Support consistent routines with gentle, customizable reminders that fit real life.
Reduce overwhelm with clear, beginner-friendly care steps.
Help users organize plants and tasks by space/routine to make upkeep intuitive.
Use encouraging tone and progress cues to build confidence rather than guilt.

Personas

I created personas to represent key user types and keep design decisions grounded in their motivations, constraints, and pain points—informing priorities and key design choices.

Journey Map

Mapping the user journey revealed emotional highs and lows—from excitement at purchase to guilt and confusion when problems arise—helping prioritize supportive guidance and low-friction routines.

IA & SiteMap

I created a sitemap to organize the core experience—adding plants, grouping them by space, setting reminders, and managing today’s tasks—so navigation stays simple and predictable.

Design Guidelines

Keep setup low-friction — Add a plant and set a routine in a few quick steps
Organize by real life— Group plants by space (living room, balcony) to make routines easier to manage.
Support flexible reminders — Reminders should be adjustable to the user’s schedule and feel like gentle nudges, not strict alarms.
Make “today” the default — The home screen should surface today’s tasks clearly with quick actions (mark done / skip / snooze).
Reduce overwhelm with clear next steps — Prefer short, actionable prompts over long explanations.
Encouraging tone — Use supportive language and progress cues to build confidence over time.

With the structure and design guidelines defined, I moved into concept exploration and flow design—mapping key tasks and translating them into wireframes.

03. Design

This work focused on exploring solution directions and translating the defined problem into an experience structure. I reviewed existing plant-care patterns, mapped the core flow, and iterated through wireframes to reduce complexity and keep setup low-friction. This helped validate the navigation and task model before moving into high-fidelity screens.

Exploration

I started by reviewing existing plant-care apps to understand common patterns, then used ideation and HMW questions to define the most relevant opportunities to explore.

Competitve Analysis

Key findings:

Many apps are strong at identification / diagnostics, but less focused on habit-building routines.
Journaling-style apps support areas / organization, reinforcing the value of grouping plants by space/zone.
Premium models often gate advanced support behind paid tiers, which can add friction for beginners.

Opportunities I prioritized for v1

Gentle, customizable reminders that fit real schedules
A clear “Today” view with simple next actions (done / skip / snooze)
Space-based organization to reduce mental load when caring for multiple plants

How Might We Opportunities

Core HMWs (v1):

How might we help users remember plant care tasks without feeling pressured or judged?
How might we make plant care feel simple and rewarding instead of stressful and time-consuming?
How might we help users build consistent routines by organizing plants and reminders by space (e.g., living room, balcony)?
How might we reduce overwhelm by surfacing clear “next steps” for each plant at the right time?
How might we support flexible, customizable reminders that adapt to a user’s schedule and preferences?

Flow & Structure

These flows clarified the core journey and helped me decide what to prototype in high fidelity.

I mapped three supporting flows to cover setup, reminders, and space management.

Flow 1 - Add a Plant

Flow 2 - Set Remidners

Flow 3 - Manage Spaces

Flow 1 - Add a Plant

1/3

Iteration highlight: I initially explored “Zones” as a concept, but early feedback suggested it could be confusing (e.g., climate/hardiness zones). As the design progressed, I renamed it to Spaces and removed a dedicated “Zones” screen to reduce navigation and keep the experience lightweight.

Early wireframes

I explored multiple layout variations in wireframes before selecting a simpler v1 structure for hi-fi.

Iteration Highlights:

Simplified space management by removing a dedicated Zones screen
Organized plant details so core actions (space + reminders) stay prominent, while extra info can live under an Overview section
Explored browsing options (all plants vs space-based) and kept v1 focused

04. Deliver

With the structure validated in wireframes, I moved into high-fidelity design and prototyping. I brought together the key moments—adding plants, organizing by space, and setting reminders—into a cohesive flow with a supportive tone and simple decision-making.

Core flow: Add a Plant

Designed to keep setup low-friction so users can add plants quickly and move on.

Optional Setup: Reminders + Spaces

Users can personalize care during setup—or skip and do it later without losing momentum.

Plant Details

Editing reminders and spaces stays accessible from plant details, supporting flexible routines over time.

Key Decisions:

Designed the hi-fi flow to keep plant setup fast and reduce drop-off
Made reminders + spaces optional so users can personalize without slowing onboarding
Standardized the plant details view so the next action (add reminder / add space) is always easy to find

Prototype

Explore the clickable prototype to see the core flow in action.

View Prototype

05. Reflection + Next Steps

Reflection

I prioritized clarity over completeness—v1 focuses on the core habit loop instead of packing in every plant-care feature.
The main tradeoff was balancing speed with personalization: reminders and spaces are optional so users can start quickly and refine later.

Next Steps

Planned enhancement: add a “Today” view for quick task completion (done/skip/snooze).
Add app-recommended reminder defaults (editable) to make setup easier for beginners.
Run light usability testing and iterate on labels + flow clarity based on what users struggle with.