Growing Plants at Home
User Research
Yard
2018 - 2019
Understanding the Why and the How helps in R&D process to deliver good usability, as well as a positive user experience in a product or service. Therefore, we had a mission to dig deeper into the target user's motivation, needs, and pain-points.
Facing people
Understanding context of use
We firstly brainstorm the criteria of our target users, which is the people who grow plants/food at home and live in small spaces.
After that I started to reach those people via Facebook, as well as conversations in supermarkets, plant shops and networking events in Düsseldorf. 11 people participated and each interview lasted between 30-90 mins long. Every interview was audio recorded with consent. Then I listened to them once again to take notes.
Motivations, Needs and Pains
Specifying user requirements
After the exploring was done, it was the time to define, conclude and align with the team. I developed a persona, Dorothy Koch aka "Doro", presenting the data about user's goals, motivations, likes, needs, pains and constraints based on the 11 in-dept interviews conducted earlier. I also illustrated 2 storyboards about the persona in showing struggles in her context in specific scenarios.
Persona and storyboarding are great tools not only for the research and development purpose, but they also provide concrete visualization is great for team alignment so that everyone is on the same page.
"Bringing plants into a tiny space is like bringing a giraffe into your home. The environment is just not the best for them to grow."
– Doro
Startup Woche Düsseldorf
We hosted an event for Startup Woche Düsseldorf 2019 for people to get to know Yard as a product and a team. As a UI&UX Designer, I was presenting about UX design and human-centred design approach, and how we applied in the R&D process. Also, I was showing the results of user research.
