The Compost Club: Sustainable Gardening Solution
Project Overview
The Sill is an online-based plant shop that provides plant lovers with indoor plants & subscriptions, tools, & knowledge for plant owners nationwide.
The Sill caters to a more urban plant lover with store locations in Los Angeles, Chicago, & New York. With a growing user base and houseplants increasing popularity, how can The Sill provide unique quality products for their customers while narrowing down its carbon footprint?
Client:
The Sill
Core users:
Beginner Users: Urban Gardeners
Roles:
Assumptions & objectives, proto-personas, research moderation, user stories, user flows, final persona, prototyping, final presentation
Tools:
Google Docs, Google Sheets, Miro, Figma, Fig Jam, Canva, Personify, Typeform, Monday.com
Team:
Alia Elkady, Zoe Muellner, & Myself
Duration:
Mid-May – Late June 2022
What We’re Trying to Solve
With a growing user base and houseplants' increasing popularity, how can The Sill provide unique quality products & programs for their customers while narrowing down its carbon footprint?
During initial brainstorming, we noticed a gap in services provided by our competitors that The Sill could fill while still addressing the betterment of the planet. Consumers are calling for a more sustainable packaging solution from e-commerce businesses, as the e-commerce packaging waste they produce is flooding the world.
Who: The Sill: Urban Gardeners of differing skill levels
What: Environmentally friendly packaging materials.
Where: Shipping within the continental US (Locally: NYC, Boston, Chicago, LA, San Francisco).
When: Whenever shipping products, especially subscription boxes. Scope: integrate within the next year.
Why: Reduce shipping and packaging waste, help protect the environment, practice what we preach, and consumers feel pride and a sense of agency.
The Challenge
How might we provide Urban Gardeners with their gardening needs using a circular packaging system so that consumers can receive their products with a reusable packaging solution?
How to best address a circular packaging solution that allowed consumers to use the packaging became evident as a composting program provided by the sill where users could receive fertilized soil for their compost.
Users Want To:
Garden in small spaces
Reduce carbon footprint and utilize waste
Contribute to bettering the environment
Make gardening more manageable with guidance
The Process
Competitive Analysis
Analyzed 8 competitors: 5 Direct – Competitors providing subscription-based gardening services, 2 Indirect – Competitors that provide users with online services for gardening needs
Components: Google Sheets Document
Key Competitors
We also analyzed some of our key competitors and identified some opportunities that The Sill could take advantage of.
Proto-Personas
We started discovery by creating proto-personas and some empathy maps to remove our worldview and put ourselves in the mindset of our users. Proto-Personas were created to understand better our user group and some of the motivations, goals, and pain points they might face. These proto-personas were later validated by research and combined into one research-backed persona.
Research Methodology
5 Qualitative Interviews: Urban gardeners – main user focus, gaining insights into their needs & pain points.
Interview Duration: 45 minutes – 1 hour
Components: Consent form, Informational Interview, and Analysis with cluster mapping
Key Research Insights
After completing our research, we analyzed our data using a card-sorting method. We identified key components that helped improve our project.
All Participants Agreed:
They want to be more energy efficient and reduce their carbon footprint.
Subscriptions have to be worth the investment.
Prefer to buy new plants in store.
Most Participants Agreed:
Preferred to buy plants in-store over online.
Found no desire to participate in online plant subscriptions.
Excited to potentially compost, but they don’t have the space or knowledge.
Our Main Persona
After completing our research, we analyzed our data using a card-sorting method. We identified key components that helped improve our project.
Story Boards
These user stories worked together to build out the user flow map. This map helped define the natural flow of our new experience and how users might easily navigate the space.
Our urban gardener goes to The Sill website to enroll in a composting plan.
Once on the home page of The Sill’s website, they see access to the composting club from a banner and a title in the top menu panel.
After clicking the get started button on the banner the gardener proceeds through the sign-up pages, giving their name, login information, pick-up and delivery times, and selecting their compost club plan tier.
After finalizing the setup, they get a welcome message letting them know when they should expect the delivery of their bucket and their first pick-up date.
User Stories
Our next step was to create user stories based on our persona’s viewpoints. After analyzing and ensuring we perused stories valid to our user-based research,we narrowed down to core stories important for the next steps of our project.
As an urban gardener, I want to access programs and benefits in-store so I don’t have to take extra time on the website.
As an urban gardener, I want a simple compost solution that doesn’t produce a lot of smell.
As an urban gardener, I want to gain buildable knowledge of my plants so that I can grow to become a better gardener.
As an urban gardener, I want to reach out to a ‘care technician’ via chat so that I can get specific help with my plant care questions.
As an urban gardener, I want to enroll in a compost club, so I can participate in a healthier, greener environment.
As an urban gardener, I want to access my compost club information so I can change, cancel, slow, or update it.
Task Flows:
Our user stories then built out into user flows. These flows helped define the natural flow of our new experience and how users might easily navigate the space.
Mood Board
Now that we have empathized with my users and started to identify the flow of the project, we focused on the visual aspects of how the functions were going to come together while still maintaining the existing branding for The Sill.
Low-Fidelity Prototype
Once our Ideation stages were completed, we created low fidelity wire frames from our user flow and story boards to visualize the path our users would take throughout their experience.
We established the most important information we needed to attain in order to provide our gardeners with their service and completed this in as few steps possible.
After finalizing their sign up, our users are greeted with a confirmation thank you from there they can exit, or go check out their new compost club profile.
Design System
With Wireframes and mood boards created, it was time to solidify our design system. Utilizing the current system that The Sill already has, we built our buttons, links, callouts, and cards for The Compost Club.
User Testing Methodology
Moderated User Testing
Tested by 5 urban gardeners: Urban gardeners – main user focus
Components: Low fidelity prototype, User Testing Guide, FigJam, & analysis
The Solution
From our design system and wireframes, we built a prototype and set up a user testing plan. Our first phase is set to test the users’ ability to navigate their profiles quickly and efficiently with minimal pain points.
Update Your Plan
Our Compost Club needed a quick way to change our users' plan level.
Considering our interviews and user stories, we built a club profile with as minimal steps as possible.
Update My Plan allows you to change your plan tier. Choosing a higher level allows you to receive more fertilizer each month.
Change Your Contact Information
The Compost Club needed to allow users to update their information & access the latest information.
Initially, our contact toolbar only had email, phone number, and subscription extras. After presenting our prototype to industry leaders, our contact page was updated with an area for them to update their addresses.
Adding the address section allows users to find their address in a familiar place and customize different addresses for mail and compost delivery.
Change Your Bin Exchange
The Compost Club needed to allow users to customize their plan delivery & pick up options and allow them to give drivers special instructions.
Our Bin Exchange initially housed the only location to update your address. After talking with industry leaders, our address was moved to ‘My Contact’, and the ability to add a secondary address for compost shipment became a way users can further customize their Bin Exchange.
Our Bin Exchange is also further developed with the option to customize how you receive your fertilizer.
The Special Instructions section lets you leave a custom message for your bin exchange driver.
Delay Your Plan
The Compost Club needed a transparent way to allow users to delay their plans.
Delay or Cancel Plan is transparently displayed at the top menu navigation.
Allows users to delay or cancel their plan, but encourages them to delay over canceling by making it the initial screen upon entry.
Once your plan is delayed, you are greeted with a confirmation that your plan has been paused.
Next Steps
Now that our prototype has been built and reviewed by professionals in our industry, we plan to introduce our prototype to a user testing group for testing and analysis.
Our next steps consist of the following:
‘Update My Plan’ and ‘Delay or Cancel Plan’ are to merge to become ‘Manage My Plan’. This will allow users to find all the ways to edit their plans in one central interaction. It will remove a menu item from our top menu toolbar, creating a profile with quicker accessibility than before.
Next, we will create the prototype for the sign-up process. We will then test with users to better understand the functionality, usability, and mental load of our users as they navigate the sign-up process for The Sill Compost Club.
Build a community space where users can share their progress and what improvements the program has brought to their lives. This also can serve to promote The Compost Club.
Design an app specifically for The Compost Club to make it easier for users to access their accounts.
Finally, we plan to conduct usability testing with more Urban Gardeners to assess their interest in the project as well as the functionality of the compost club profile.
Key Insights from Industry Leaders
“Think about the best helper video you’ve ever seen, and maybe one of the shortest ones, right? Just to show how simple it is! ‘You do this. You sign up. We do this. It’s all under your control so you manage it. Ready to start.’” —Howard Schwartz
“Hearing you say that... makes me want to actually say, manage my plan or manage plan or something because it really helps me understand what I can do.” —Howard Schwartz
“These would definitely be two different user tests. Great scenarios though, and they make complete sense from a sequential standpoint.” —Helena Barber
“On the right side, you can actually put the value props of why you should join… that way you're really training that mentally on the right side that you have all the time.” —Santosh Subramanyam
Lessons Learned
This project taught us many different tools we could utilize along the process of UX Design to help us better understand and complete tasks across the design system.
In ideating, we learned how to build project briefs and how to storyboard.
With guest lectures, we learned more insights on how to write copy for our project as well as how to present findings to stakeholders.