Neighborhood Nursery
Website & brand/marketing concept design for expert gardener and native habitat consultant's small business in the Pacific Northwest.
My role: UX/UI Researcher & Designer
Project duration: 1 month (ongoing)
The Challenge:
Research & create a business concept, branding/marketing strategy, and website design for Neighborhood Nursery.
The Process:
Understand
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Defining the problem
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Determining existing resources
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Empathizing with the user
Defining the problem
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Researching user needs, creating a problem statement and possible solution, designing and conducting user surveys and interviews, analyzing data and affinity mapping
Research:
My client noted a few specific concerns that informed how I approached research for this project.
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Beautiful Website Design.
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Many nurseries have poor UX/UI in their site designs. Creating great aesthetics paired with intuitive navigation patterns was an opportunity to outshine competitors.
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Mission-driven.
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Choosing the perfect copy & content to tell the story of Neighborhood Nursery's mission as it relates to permaculture, community-mindedness, and education for novice and experienced gardeners alike. Looking at how businesses with similar values have identified and promoted their missions would be important.
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Privacy & Safety Considerations.
This business will operate out of my client's home garden, and accordingly issues of safety are paramount when posting personal information/address online. Researching other nurseries that operate from their homes would be important to see how others have negotiated privacy concerns.
Problem Statement & Potential Solution:
Using the results of my preliminary research, I formed the following problem statement and potential solution.
Problem Statement
Gardeners of all ages and experience levels need a way to affordably purchase plants (especially pollinator-friendly, eco-conscious, and wildlife-friendly plants) as well as access expert gardening planning consultation services specific to their region and individual garden space challenges. They also want tips and troubleshooting for successful growing.
We will know this to be true when we see that users are able to peruse plant inventory for sale, identify date/time/location of upcoming seasonal plant sales and nursery tours by appointment, and schedule garden planning consultation successfully via the Neighborhood Nursery website (and business pages on Social Media). Secondarily, we will monitor site traffic measuring target audience engagement including video content offering tips and advice for gardening success in the Pacific Northwest.
Potential Solution:
A website that is visually appealing, mission-focused, easily navigated/provides all necessary information clearly, and features inspiring imagery and content. It will introduce gardeners of all experience levels to Neighborhood Nursery's philosophy, plant inventory, pricing, and purchase opportunities, and garden planning consultation services in one user-friendly application. It will also feature video blog entries with gardening tips specific to native plants and climate concerns of the Pacific Northwest.
User Surveys & Interviews
Next, I created a script for user surveys and interviews. I recruited participants from a local gardening group that includes gardeners of all experience levels, as well as more broadly through social media. For those participants who preferred a survey to an interview, I sent a form created with Google forms. Interviews were conducted over the telephone over a 2-day period.
I received 16 survey responses, and conducted 4 phone interviews. My participant demographics ranged in age from 20's to 60's+, from novice gardeners to experts, and included responses from target audience users in multiple states, including: Oregon, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Georgia.
I also created a separate script for interviews with small business owners who are operating a private nursery similar to Neighborhood Nursery. I was specifically interested in speaking with individuals who were selling plants out of their home gardens, as I continued to debate how to balance privacy concerns and safety with accessibility to customers.
I spoke with three plant sellers operating backyard/private nurseries in two different states: Texas and Oregon. These interviews tended to go "off-script", with the business owners offering all sorts of advice based on their very different personal experiences, all of which was interesting and led to insights and providing solutions to potential problems.
Data Analysis & Insights
Affinity Mapping
I transcribed user interview and survey responses onto individual sticky notes to create an affinity map. This allowed me to visualize trends in user responses and more easily analyze the substantial amount of data collected.
Data Analysis
Data analysis for this project was aided by the built-in analytics of Google Forms. User interview and survey responses were combined and demographics and scaled data was presented clearly through a series of graphs and charts. so those items were not included on the affinity map. I created a report for my client documenting insights that would further guide the project's scope. You can view the full report by clicking the link below.
Insights:
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People are overwhelmingly interested in choosing pollinator-friendly, eco-friendly, and wildlife-friendly plants for their gardens.
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People decide where to purchase plants based on BUSINESS MODEL, ACCESS & QUALITY
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Online presence is a must! Especially Social Media (Instagram & Facebook).
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People don’t know where to seek help (ACCESS), who has trustworthy advice (TRUST), and who does the scale/type of project they’d like to accomplish (SCOPE). Creating messaging around each of these concerns will be necessary.
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100% of participants seek growing tips/troubleshooting advice online.
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“Edible landscaping” may confuse people as a term. Opportunity to educate.
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People want the emails! (?!?)
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Due to range of user demographics, designs will need to be accessible and inviting to users ranging in age, education level, and socio-economic status. UI elements, and copy/language need to be appropriate and welcoming to this BROAD target audience range.
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To hire a helper for the garden or not to hire a helper, that is the question.
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Barriers to hiring assistance:
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$$$/cost/budget
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Space limitations
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Trust
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Self-reliance, enjoyment of the planning process
Benefit/appeal of hiring assistance:
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To see the bigger picture, make a long-term plan
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Help translate a vision to reality
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Climate/garden-specific expertise regarding typical concerns (soil, light, lack of space, moisture/drought/heat, etc.)
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Lack of confidence, experience, or general overwhelm by the tasks or space (“I’m not a natural gardener/I kill everything/I don’t want anything that’s a lot of work/I don’t want to seem lazy asking for help…”)
Determining Existing Resources
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Competitor Analyses
I completed a competitor analysis on five businesses which each share a common element with Neighborhood Nursery: business mission, model, or scope of services.
1. The Tomato Lady, at www.thetomatolady.com
2. Nourish Edible Landscapes, at www.nourishediblelandscapes.com
3. Sherrett Food Forest, via their Instagram page @sherretfoodforest
4. Sun Gold Farm, at www.sungoldfarm.com
5. Gardenary, at www.gardenary.com
The Tomato Lady is an individual in the pacific northwest selling fruits and vegetables, seasonally, from her home property to the public. I was specifically interested in how she navigated privacy concerns regarding her home address being posted as well as inventory listings for her plant sales.
Nourish: Edible Landscapes is a landscape consultation service assisting clients to create and maintain urban farm systems with permaculture and sustainability philosophies at its core. They focus on larger landscaping projects in the PNW. I was interested specifically in how they described their mission and values as well as the pricing structure and format for their consultation services.
Sherrett Food Forest shares a similar mission to Nourish in terms of education around edible ecosystem creation and gardening as sustainability-in-action in the PNW. I was interested in how a visitor to their Instagram page could schedule a tour of their Food Forest, and how they share educational resources for urban gardeners in their area.
Instagram @sherrettfoodforest
As a thriving local farm, Sun Gold Farm has a fairly different business model from Neighborhood Nursery. My client identified their site as a more successful example than many of appealing layout and navigation (UX/UI). I also focused on their plant sale information as another point of similarity.
Gardenary is the responsive web application of a successful gardening coach who offers individual coaching and customized design services. My client identified Gardenary as an example of better UX/UI design than the average nursery or garden-related site. I analyzed Gardenary's process for fielding inquiries about coaching services and customized design packages/pricing.
The Results:
I used the framework of my project's scope as a guide to my analysis, doing side-by-side comparisons of each app's home page *appeal*, copy/content and imagery, ease of navigation, contact/privacy considerations, and the specific instance where each business shares a common element with Neighborhood Nursery. I then compiled my findings into a chart to share the data with my client. To read the small print, click on the PDF link below.
Empathizing with the User
Creating user personas and user stories
User Personas & Stories
Based upon the insights drawn from user interviews and surveys, I created three personas. They represent a range of ages, professions, and garden goals/needs. Each persona speaks to a target audience group, and the necessary service that Neighborhood Nursery can provide to this customer type. I also created three user stories for each persona to further illuminate their needs. This set the groundwork necessary to create user task flows and begin building the Information Architecture of the project.
Ideate
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User Flows
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Organizing Information Architecture
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Visualizing the Foundations
User Flows
Persona Task Flows & Analyses
I analyzed task flows for our personas to accomplish the three major website functions: search inventory for plants depending on their personal criteria and identify how to purchase plants; search for gardening tips and growing information; and schedule garden design services. Using Miro, I created user task flow charts.
Scenario: As an avid bird-watcher, Rachel needs a way
to find and buy plants that will invite wildlife to visit her patio.
Rachel discovers Neighborhood Nursery via Reel on Instagram. Taps link in bio and is directed to Neighborhood Nursery website.
Entry Point: Website opens in browser
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Task Analysis:
1. Navigates to Plants & Sales page
2. Views upcoming plant sale dates and option to visit the nursery by appointment
3. Filters Inventory list by "Wildlife-friendly" plants
4. Identifies plants to purchase
5. Clicks on "Contact Us" to schedule a time to visit the nursery
6. Selects from Call, Email, or Connect via Social Media and requests appointment
7. Receives response confirming appointment time
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Success criteria: Wildlife-friendly plants are found and can be purchased at the nursery.
Organizing Information Architecture
Whiteboarding & Navigational Patterns
Using Miro, I then created a basic site map to visualize the hierarchy of the website.
Visualizing the Foundations
Low-Fidelity to Mid-fidelity Wireframes
It was time to jump into Figma and create something tangible for my client to review. Although this will be a responsive website, my client was primarily interested to see a desktop version of the site, therefore I inverted the usual mobile-first creation pattern I would follow, and mocked up desktop wireframes first.
I am currently working with my client to finalize mid-fidelity wireframe details prior to beginning usability testing. Examples of the current iteration of the website pages can be seen below. Check back for project updates. Website to launch Spring 2023.
