Gardentronic
SERVICE
ROLE
TOOLS
PROJECT DURATION
WEB APPlication
UI DESIGNER
SKETCH, INVISION, PEN & PAPER
3 MONTHS | February - april 2018
OVERVIEW
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
RICKY LYMAN, SPACE + TIME
UI DESIGNER
KRISTIN HENRY (ME)
GardenTronic (previously known as GardenBuzz) is a gardening interest website based in Northern Idaho. It provides a platform for modern-day gardeners to showcase their own home gardens and build connections with others in the online gardening community. GardenTronic is also a tool for small businesses to market their services to gardeners in their area. My role in this project was to apply a UI that catered to the site’s user base. I designed for both desktop and mobile.
DISCOVERY
THE USER
upper middle class, homeowner, SEASONED GARDENER, 45-65 years old
THEIR NEEDS
PLANT IDENTIFICATION, ADVICE FROM OTHER HOBBYISTS, connections to gardening services in their area
THEIR BEHAVIORS
USES GARDENING AS A FORM OF MEDITATION, LOVES TO SHARE THEIR WORK
My first step was to learn as much as I could about gardeners. Through my research, I learned that out of the nearly 164 million homeowners in the United States, nearly half (49 percent) gardened in the past 12 months. Gardening homeowners are 10 percent more likely than all homeowners to be baby boomers (45 to 64 years in age) and 33 percent have at least a college degree. Forty-seven percent of gardening homeowners hold full-time employment, 26 percent have an annual household income of $100,000 or more, and 22 percent are retired.
This initial research on my user base dictated my design solution. I wanted to apply a UI that was simple, elegant, and provided ease of use to a user base that was older.
DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS
featured gardens
USER’S PROJECTS
Plant Identification
Vendor pages
chat
reflections
in an ideal scenario without time and budget constraints, i would have recruited real-life gardeners and conducted user interviews and usability tests to further refine the design