HERBOLOGY

Overview

Whether you desire to grow your own food, exercise your creativity, or lead a healthier lifestyle, starting an herb garden from scratch is a simple way to accomplish your goals. But if you’re just starting to stick your hands in soil, it can be daunting knowing where to begin.

Enter Herbology, the one stop educational platform that successfully teaches beginner gardeners to learn, plant, and successfully grow herbs - building beginner’s confidence and leading us towards a more sustainable future.

This is a personal project I completed for fun. I love to garden and want to share that love with anyone interested in growing their own garden but doesn’t quite know how to grow things — yet!

 

Role

I created Herbology one weekend purely for fun. At the time, I was working on Welcomary, which is similar to an HR platform, and I was in need of a creative outlet. At the time, I was also planning which vegetables and flowers I was going to plant in my garden bed and determining their specific needs. This project gave me the perfect opportunity to get my hands dirty with some creative UI work and have a bit of fun.

Methods Used

User Interviews, Feature Prioritization, Competitive Analysis, User Persona, Card Sorting, User Personas, User flows, Problem Statement, Wireframes, Usability Testing

Tools

Paper Sketching, Figma, Zoom

Timeline

7 Day Sprint

Challenge

As a beginner gardener it can be overwhelming knowing where to begin. Beginners may lack the basic understanding on how to start a garden in regards to the best garden location, water source, sun, planting zone, soil and/or an overall knowledge of the plants they wish to grow. I wanted to design a website for beginner gardeners with a focus on herbs to show beginners that starting a garden is not as difficult as they might imagine.

Outcome

In my designs, I show beginner gardeners how to plan and manage the success of their herb garden so that they can make better decisions when gardening without the fear of failure. I wanted users to have a visually stunning experience that was captivating and easy to explore.

Here’s what they said:

“The design is very pretty. It makes me want to start an herb garden.”

“I can grow herbs? I would use this to find herbs that suit my lifestyle.”

Rooted in research and empathy, I was able to design the Herbology website to help users figure out where to start limiting frustration whilst producing the maximum desired outcome.


Read more about my research process below.

Competitive & Comparative Analysis

The Scoop on the Competition

Since I was starting this design project from scratch, I looked to my competitors to better understand the market. I wanted get an idea of my competitors strengths and weaknesses to identify the key features my competitors’ services had and what features were missing. Studying the landscape of my competitors not only helped me understand what improvements were needed in the market but it also helped me figure out how I could deliver better product solutions.

Target User & Independent Research

Meet the Budding Plant Parents

When designing a new product, the first thing I like to analyze is the target user, “who is the this product for?” To develop a deeper understanding of my user, I conducted independent and secondary research through surveys, trends, and existing reports on beginner gardeners and new “plant parents.”

Here’s what I learned:

User Interviews

Planting the Seeds for Success

I interviewed 5 participants in a group who matched my target demographic (new gardeners and homeowners - mostly millennials) to learn how they feel about gardening and the pain points they’ve encountered.

Here is what they had to say:

Key Findings

Lack of Knowledge All participants agreed that they lacked knowledge on one or more of the topics: (1) what herbs grow well together, (2) alternative gardening methods such as container gardening or vertical gardening, (3) how to trim herbs to keep them from flowering, (4) how to re-pot herbs after they’ve taken them home from the nursery of once they’ve outgrown their containers.

Information Overload 3/5 of the participants discussed there being too much information to read through on topics such as how to plant and what their plants needs to thrive. 2/5 said they don’t bother reading if the information is too extensive and suggested a step by step visual that breaks down the information.

Limited Space 2/5 of the participants live in condos and believe they currently lack the adequate space to develop an herb garden.

Card Sorting

Understanding the Roots

After completing the group interview, I presented the 5 participants with 10 different cards - (1) Basil, (2) Parsley, (3) Catnip, (4) Lavender, (5) Bee Balm, (6) Mint, (7) Echinacea, (8) Chamomile, (9) Sage (10) and Yarrow. I asked the participants to organize the herbs into groups and categorize those groups. My goal was to understand how users differentiate herbs so I could generate the organization of information into my designs. Here’s what I learned:

  • The participants grouped herbs by culinary recognition, medicinal properties, fragrance and insect repellent

  • None of the participants could identify the culinary and/or medicinal uses of all 10 herbs

  • All of the participants wanted visual cues in order to categorize the herbs

Design Studio

Concept Design

What I previously learned about the target user and the market revealed insights into how my design concepts could satisfy users needs while addressing the major issues from the existing market. I created wireframes with the following concepts in mind:

  • Allow the user to explore

  • Let the user find herbs that they can care for

  • Provide intuitive instructions for beginner gardeners

  • Provide users with visual break downs on how to start an herb garden

Wireframe to High Fidelity Testing

Designs Taking Root

I wanted to provide solutions that allowed users to visually explore herbs so that they could pick the right herbs for their lifestyle and location as well as garden with confidence. I designed a website that lets the user easily navigate between the range of herbs available, view herbs that fit their lifestyle, and quickly understand what they need to do to care for the herbs of their choosing.


Here’s what the website design included:

Grow Quiz

I created an interactive grow quiz to provide expert insight to newbies. By answering a few simple questions, users can get a recommendation for an herb that fits their lifestyle and learn a bit more about the herb recommended for them.  

Herb Library

I added filters and facets that allows the user to filter their search not only by category, but also care difficulty, zone light, growth rate, and light. I also included water requirement information on each product thumbnail so that users can easily understand what it takes to care for their herbs, without having to dig around for this information.

Herb Details Page

I included a details and care section for users to quickly access the information they need in order to grow a particular herb. Having an herb detail page helps the user understand how to grow an herb, it’s culinary and medicinal purposes, how to prune and harvest the herb, what other herbs it grows well with, and how to repot if necessary.

How to Start An Herb Garden

Since I learned from users that there is an overwhelming amount of information available and because many have a hectic schedule, I incorporated videos for each step on the How to Grow an Herb Garden. Videos offer users the flexibility to pause and rewind in order to review particular areas. I also included an overview of the video in text for people who prefer reading to watching.

Next Steps

Reflection

Outgrowing still means growing

Looking back on my designs for this project, there are many things that I would like to change. There were many things that I had already changed. I am confident in knowing that outgrowing some of my design choices means I’m still growing.