Plant Foundry
Our client, Lowe’s largest home improvement retailer in the US. Lowe's is the second-largest hardware chain
in the United States behind rival The Home Depot and ahead of Menards. As of February 2021, Lowe's and its related businesses operate 2,197 home improvement and hardware stores in North America. In 2022 Lowe’s plans to launch Lowe’s Garden Plus to enable DIY and Pro customers to blend their physical and digital shopping experiences. Lowe’s company goal is to help plant lovers and doers get more done.
The Problem
The indoor and outdoor plant market has seen explosive growth over the last couple of years. Some competitors, The Sill and Bloomscape are two popular online shops that sell and deliver a variety of indoor houseplants along with plant care advice and accessories. This growth has been fueled by tech-savvy millennials
and social media. You’ve been contracted by Lowe’s to establish user needs and create a desktop experience that will allow users to discover, plan, purchase, and care for indoor and/or outdoor gardens.
Research
My team and I got to work. we put together a set of surveys and sent them out.
we were targeting a younger demographic that wants to want to grow their plant family and is up for a little DIY.
47 Respondents
46%
of respondents own 10+ plants
45%
of the respondents spend $11-$20 of new plants
68%
prefer shopping at an independent store
Affinity Map
Hover over for the full affinity map
right of the bat, we were able to see a pattern, indicating the pain point and the struggles that one should face when shopping for new plants. one is the number of options they have to choose from and the second most important one is PRICE.
Persona
We put introduced our persona to our interviewees for our ideation season. we put together this persona, based on our findings from our surveys. we tried to hit all the pain points and bring the problems to life.
Problem Statment
1. How might we help Shanté decide on a plant within her budget?
2. How might we make it easier for Shanté to take care of her plants?
3. How might we help Shanté easily access the information she needs while shopping?
How might we...
1. How might we help Shanté decide on a plant within her budget?
2. How might we make it easier for Shanté to take care of her plants?
3. How might we help Shanté easily access the information she needs while shopping?
Ideation
With the ideation session, we had our MVP
Plant Selection Quiz
Proactive Plant Care
Troubleshooting/Chat Support
Task Flow
Plant Quiz
Talk to Plant Pro
Crazy 8
After having our task flows we played a game. called Crazy 8 that the rules are as follows:
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Set up. Every person should have one piece of paper folded into 8 sections. ...
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Start the clock. With eight minutes on the clock, all team members should silently sketch out eight different ideas based on your How Might We statements. ...
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Playbacks. ...
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Vote. ...
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Cluster.
From there our journey starts.
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Low-Fi
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Mid-Fi
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High-Fi
Low-Fi
Mid-Fi
Mid-Fidelity Usability Observations
Our team conducted 4 mid-fidelity usability tests and the following were some major observations that needed to be iterated on in our high-fidelity wireframes.
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Needed a cart feature. Didn’t know the added item was put into the cart.
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Struggled to find where the chat feature is.
Journey Map 2.0
