Designing an app that speaks for your plants 🚧

There's a ton of precedence for the benefits of spending time around plants. Buuut... for many people, plant care is downright intimidating. The tech behind Greg makes it possible to keep plants alive. But to reduce that intimidation factor and lower the barrier to entry, I wanted the feeling you get while using Greg to be similar to that of spending time in nature: positive, calming, simple.

To accomplish this, I used asymmetry, organic shapes, and a color palette sourced from the natural world to develop a simple and effective design system for Greg.

As part of the redesign,

When your plant needs water or more light, it will let you know.

Iteration

To help users connect with their plants on a deeper level, I wanted the plant spirits to have a look & feel that was closer to their "parent" plant. To do this, I worked with our plant biologist to identify colloquial plant categories, and then conducted visual studies of each to come up with a subset of shape types and color palettes representative of each category of plant.

A closer look at the UI

Designing the UI elements to support the new visual direction was a challenge in and of itself.

I wanted the app, and caring for your plants, to feel fun – game-like, but only in a positive way; never stealing your attention, always providing value. We also wanted people to spend more time on the plant card, so I designed these elements with that in mind: the goal was to have fun and take your time exploring and learning about your plant.

As a designer, it's incredible to hear when you are able to give someone a positive experience doing the thing they got the app for. When the tool becomes something people love to use, the beginnings of a strong brand that people share with others is formed.

Over time, with this redesign and other efforts, our net promoter score would increase by several multiples of when we began.