Projects
Blossom
Project Overview:
People like plant owners have trouble understanding plants' needs because they can’t communicate with humans.
Blossom is an app that guides you through plant parenthood.
Goals:
-Improve accessibility
-Improve information architecture
Why Redesign?
Exploring the Blossom app, I've noticed some usability issues regarding accessibility. I decided to improve Blossom to solve pain points and improve the user's experience.
Accessibility Issues:
Through WebAIM's online color contrast checker, Blossom's User Interface is not fully accessible as certain parts fail Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). WCAG requires a 3:1 contrast ratio between the link text and the surrounding body text.
Using the contrast checker, the lower contrast ratio is 2.13:1 which fails both Level AA and Level AAA. Passing Level AA of WCAG guidelines ensures that the text is still readable to those who may have color blindness.
User Research:
I created a competitive analysis to understand where Blossom stands in the market. It also helped me think of ways to improve the app compared to others.
By looking through the worst reviews on Blossom, I can analyze current app pain points and what feature prioritizations I can come up with.
User Persona:
After doing user research, I created a user persona of a young new plant owner. This person reflected a real user pattern of killing a plant due to overwatering and/or incorrect care of the plant.
I wanted to reorganize the information architecture, so it would be more user-friendly to new plant owners.
Card sorting is one of my favorite UX research methods because it uncovers how the target audience’s knowledge is structured. It creates an information architecture that matches new users’ expectations.
Redesigned Information Architecture (IA):
After going through 15 card sorting exercises with new plant owners, this is the redesigned information architecture. I simplified and reorganized the app to have 4 pages instead of 5.
Additionally, there were duplicated app functions located on different pages.
