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Did you know that a tomato is a fruit... AND a vegetable? I didn't until my research!
Garden Buddy is a website that helps people living on Long Island NY learn how to grow vegetables. This website fills in the gaps that currently exist in the vegetable gardening space for this specific location.
Solo Project
October 2022 - January 2023
Figma, Optimal Workshop
I started my research by creating a competitor analysis of existing websites. Then I consulted with four gardening domain experts, two of whom are master gardeners. Finally, I rounded out this initial domain research with a visit to Kew Gardens (I love that place!).
In the middle of creating the domain model I ran into a problem... there was a question I had asked all my domain experts that even the master gardeners couldn't answer. My domain was an organic vegetable garden, but no one could agree on just one definition for a vegetable, and most people I asked had no definition for vegetables at all! This lead me to create a card sort comparing vegetables and fruits and how they overlap, consult with another domain expert, and to do a bit more digging on what vegetables even are. What I found out was, vegetables don't exist - at least from a botanist's perspective. The concept of vegetables are related specifically to their use in the kitchen, that's how a tomato can be both a fruit, AND a vegetable.
The domain model helped guide the reasoning for all early ideas in my first tree. I consulted my competitor's audit again and focused on what sites I had liked. To figure out what participants could and couldn’t understand before running my card sort I ran an observed pilot card sorts with three participants. I ran an open card sort with fifteen participants. Of these, three of the participants completed a moderated card sort.
I created eight tasks in my tree test as I did not want to overwhelm participants. I conducted an observed practice tree test with three participants as it had proven useful for the card sort. This led me to simplify many sections of the sitemap. After this, I ran the official tree test with fifty four participants. This tree test had a high rate of success and caused me to change very few things in my tree.
While looking at the results of my tree test I realized that most of the eight tasks I created had a high rate of success, however, many participants struggled to find the “Planting Calendar” tab. This feature was very important for users to find as it was something the Master Gardener domain experts had stressed was an important concept for their students to learn about, it was also the most important aspect of all the wayfinding information I observed. To address this, I created a polyhierarchy for this particular section by including connections to the calendar through the “What Grow Zone am I in?” page inside the “First Steps” tab. I wanted to create a user journey that could show how this polyhierarchy would be used and to make sure that it was a helpful feature for users.
Task: You are new to gardening and looking for vegetables that could be grown relatively soon and are easy for beginners. You want to save this information so that you can find it again.
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The Gardening Calendar page shows a list of plants that fit the specified filter requirements. These plants are displayed with a small calendar under them that shows when they can be planted, grown, and harvested.
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The 'What Zone Am I?' page shows the grow zones on Long Island and allows users to enter their address and find out the grow zone they are in.
On each 'Specific Plant Page' there is information on a specified plant. This includes when it can be planted, grown, and harvested. Other information includes seed swapping, common pests, and complimentary plants. The information available on this page was frequently mentioned by my domain experts during their interviews.
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The 'My Garden' page is a place for users to keep track of the plants they are currently growing or have seeds for. At the top of the page are plants that can be grown right now. To the left of the page is a filter so users can thoroughly search for the plants that they have.
During the click test the only issue the participants had was with the “plants to compliment with” label that was listed in the "Gardening Calendar" page. As this information didn’t appear to benefit participants, and because many participants clicked on other sections where they could also find this information, I removed it to simplify the page.
For the questions during the evaluation I first asked my participants about their background with gardening to ensure they had no or very little experience, I then tailored the tasks to individual participants.
Often participants would express that they preferred visual components that conveyed meaning over the longer areas of text on the same page. In the future I would like to add step by step guides on the individual plant pages replacing the current planting, growing, and harvesting tips sections. I would also include illustrations depicting the steps as some participants explained that they normally skip over text.
In future designs I want to include a color key on the Gardening Calendar page as several participants found the design on the gardening calendar useful but were confused by the color differences and unsure what they meant, due to being in a grayscale format.
While the participants liked all the options in the faceted navigation they sometimes got lost in the amount of options available. In the future I would change it to have only certain filters open in the faceted navigation.
I am currently building out a high fidelity prototype with additional pages. This will be updated soon.
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