Sprout Spot | Community Gardening App
Tools | Figma, Adobe Illustrator, and Photoshop
Recognition
AIGA Flux 2023 Interactive, Finalist
Duration
2 Months | Fall 2022
Team Members
Jonah Goode, Grace Rai, Lily Shuffler, Arayiah Stephens
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Jonah Goode :
Design Research, Brand Identity, Iconography, Illustrations, Paper prototyping, App wireframes, and Digital roughsGrace Rai :
Design Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, UI/UX Design for both the Mobile App and Kiosk
Lily Shuffler :
Design Research, Prototyping, UI/UX Design for the Mobile App
Arayiah Stephens :
Design Research, Wireframing
Sprout Spot is the newest community gardening app to help users connect to neighbors, teach useful information, and provide tool and plot rentals. Create connections with members of your local Sprout Spot garden to share progress on crops you grow. Sprout Spot will also provide the option to rent out helpful tools and equipment to help you create a hearty crop. Enable notifications to see when expert gardeners post about topics that interest you and set reminders on watering, fertilizer, or when it’s time to harvest!
About Sprout Spot
Problem
In order to combat food insecurity and create a better way of life in urban areas, community gardens are implemented in some cities.
These community gardens are public or private spaces for people to jointly grow a variety of plants and vegetation. Some benefits that these gardens provide are natural beautification, promotion of healthy lifestyles, environmental sustainability, diminishing of food deserts, and educational opportunities.
How we solved it
By utilizing Human-centered Design Thinking and Digital Experiential Design, our team sought to combine digital and physical social spaces to help people enter the gardening community, find resources, and give people the power to grow their own food.
Primary Logo | Secondary Logo
Typography
Color Palette
Brand Iconography
Brand Voice
Renewed Curiosity about Gardening
During the pandemic, the world faced a lot of supply shortages that resulted in a lack of access to fresh food. This prompted many people to start a home garden to grow their own food so that they didn’t have to worry if their local grocery store was low on supplies. This also created a community of people who were doing their own research alone with no one to bounce ideas off of or ask for help.
Initial Problem
In order to better understand our users we conducted a survey. The results of each question guided our decisions on navigation, colors, and more.
We found that half of our participants were under 25 and the other half were 50-61 years old. Most of our participants had 1-3 years of gardening experience and primarily heard about community gardening through word of mouth and social media.
Finally, our users valued having a myriad of friends within the garden and being self- sufficient.
“How can we balance providing entry-level gardening tips for beginners without alienating our more experienced gardeners?”
Who I design for- Hope Yan
Boulder, Colorado
20
Single
Student
Hope is a very talented cook who is nervous about starting to grow her own fresh ingredients because she thinks gardening is difficult. She’s determined to try and is willing to invest a bit of money if it means she’ll be able to save on fresh veggies at the store.
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She complains to her roommate how she is eager to learn but doesn’t know where to start and all the online forums she’s had to sift through were frustratingly vague.
Luckily, Her roommate has heard of a new app that might help her with that, Sprout Spot. Hope learns about how Sprout Spot connects her to folks in her community garden, helps her keep track of her crops and contains an advice forum that can be backed up by people she can meet with and learn from. -
“I want to create a dish made only from things I’ve grown myself and serve it to my friends at college.”
Who I design for- Janet Carter
Engineer
63
Married
Lutz, Florida
Janet is quite a fan of gardening and wants to branch out to try more difficult crops to challenge herself and fuel her passion for learning.
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She feels limited by her own backyard due to the poor soil and lack of proper equipment. Janet has to constantly ask neighbors to borrow equipment and flip through garden magazines to figure out how to sustain vegetables.
One day she stumbles upon a post on Instagram advertising a new Sprout Spot community garden in her area. -
“I want to try my luck with vegetables but I don’t have the resources to make a bed for them.”
So what did we learn?
Based on our survey we concluded three major needs currently not being met by community gardens.
First off, new users felt alienated walking into the average community garden, without any introduction, they felt awkward and out of place.
Second, we found many of our users are between the ages of 25-35 or 50-61.These two groups of users vary in what they look for in the gardens but both want a consistent source of information that they can trust.
Last but not least, our users want honesty, they are sick of the “top ten hacks to grow tomatoes out of thin air”, they are in search of real life people creating thriving gardens in their local community.
How might we..?
We can..
What are our Touchpoints?
A mobile app that gives members the ability to chat with one another, reach their goals, share progress, find helpful gardening resources, and control their calendars.
An on-site kiosk that allows people to see available plots, public member profiles, and daily objectives.
FLOW CHARTS
FLOW CHARTS
So how did we do it?
App: Wireframes & Finals
Final Outcomes | App
Introduction -
Users are greeted with an informational overview of the apps functions with illustrations.
Join and sign up -
Users are able to locate the closest Sprout Spot garden by entering their zip code. Once a local garden has been found, they can create a profile.
Calendar -
Track each individual crop progress, set reminders to water crops, and reminders for when to harvest. Users can also keep track of local events happening at the Sprout Spot community garden!
My Plot Journal -
When users click on the “My Plot” tab, they will be able to log which plants they are currently growing. Users can also click on the pencil icon to add information about each individual crop.
Resources -
Under “tips” are informative articles that help the user improve their garden.
Direct Messaging -
This chat feature allows peer-to-peer conversations with gardeners as well as group chats, announcements, and “ask an expert” forums.
Kiosk: Wireframes & Finals
Final Outcomes | Kiosk
Log in -
The kiosk will display a map of the garden's layout, which users can then reserve from the available plots.
Reserve a Plot -
Users will use their unique QR code located on the home screen of their Sprout Spot app.
Tool Rental -
If users are in need of tools they can rent them from the kiosk. Upon renting, the door to the garden's tool shed will unlock briefly so the user may grab the rented tools.
Reflection
Working on Sprout Spot, I found that my team and I were constantly adding and improving our wireframes as we thought more about our user’s personas. Having two extremely different age groups to consider made it challenging to balance all the features we wanted to include, while still having a relatively clean layout. If I were given more time to work on this project, I would include a live stream feature so users who could not attend classes would still receive all the information from the class.