EXPERIENCE DESIGN
SUNROOM
When plant shopping, it can be difficult to know how to best take care of the plant you are selecting and what its specific watering and lighting needs are. Often there are plant shop employees around to give you an idea on how to best care for your plant, but sometimes they are occupied with other customers or don’t have full knowledge on all the plant inventory.
The goal of this project is to enhance and better the customer's plant shopping experience by providing them knowledge and information on how to best care for their new plant additions. All the while, creating a plant shop that is welcoming, bright, and comfortable to encourage an environment that feels stress-free, easy, and light.
Role UX/UI Designer, Copywriter, Iconography Illustrator, Brand Designer
Responsibilities Ideation, Research, Prototyping, 3D Rendering, Brand Design, Illustrations
Result 3D Rendering, Digital Interactive Prototype, Signage Flats
Tools Sketchup, Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop
Research + Analysis
Becoming the Customer
As a way to refresh my memory of the customer journey of selecting and purchasing a plant, I visited a local Seattle plant shop. Once I arrived and began browsing the plant inventory, I considered ways I could improve the experience. The main thought I kept coming back to is how it can be difficult to know what plant to take home with you when you don’t have the knowledge of how to best care for it. Employees are typically happy to help when they aren’t preoccupied with other customers or their job tasks, however it seems like there was still a gap that could be filled within the experience: plant care knowledge.
User Interviews
After refreshing my memory of the customer journey of selecting and purchasing a plant, I organized three user interviews to better understand others plant shopping experiences. To do this, I asked them each a few questions so they could share their experience. My main takeaways from these interviews on their experience while visiting a plant shop was:
Unsure of what plant to purchase and how to best take care of it.
Needing pots to home the new plant in without going to another store.
Wanting there to be outdoor plant options, not just indoor plants.
Synthesis + Creation
Maquette
Once I had a clear direction and concept for the redesign of a customer's experience while shopping at a plant shop, I began crafting a maquette of the physical space. I used paper to build a 3D model of my physical space concept for Sunroom. Along with the 3D model, I included markers for where the signage and way-finding for the space would be present.
Sketch-Up Mockup
Taking my concept into Sketch-Up, I began building a mid-fidelity mockup of the space. In addition to building the space, I started placing in visual elements such as: decor, people, and plants. My primary goal while building the physical space was to make the plant shop feel welcoming, bright, and comfortable. I wanted to create an environment that felt stress-free, easy, and light. I achieved this through making the shop easy to navigate through, giving it plenty of light by adding lots of skylights, fully decorating to make it feel comfortable, and filling the space with lots of plants.
App Low—Fidelty Wireframes
After starting my mockups in Sketch-Up, I shifted my focus towards the digital experience concept. The app is an important aspect to my overall concept. The app's purpose is to provide the plant care information of all the plant inventory so customers can make an informed decision when selecting and purchasing plants. Touch-points of the app include:
Open app
Freely browse the plant inventory
Snap a photo of plant to pull up its plant care information
Read information on the plant
Add the plant to bag or favorites
Purchase in-app or bring to checkout stand
Branding
For my redesign concept, I created an entirely new brand system for the physical and digital spaces of Sunroom. Sunroom is an indoor and outdoor plant shop so it was my goal for the branding to be bright, organic, earthy, fresh, and welcoming. I chose a color palette that reflects those sentiments - earthy and organic colors. As well as I used fonts that were clean and legible to users. For the logo I combined two fonts to create something that felt welcoming and fresh.
Final Implementation
