VERJUR
User research and design for a home gardening mobile app
The problem
Forty million acres of green lawns carpet the United States, making it our single largest irrigated crop. An expanse of perfect American Lawn is revered as a status symbol but requires enormous resources to maintain and delivers few ecological services in return.
I was curious about how to inspire and excite homeowners to reduce the size of their lawn, introduce native plantings, and adopt landscaping practices that support biodiversity.
VERJUR is designed for the home gardener who finds bliss in tending to the garden and backyard. The app lets users search for plants and keep track of the plants in their garden beds. VERJUR meets gardeners where they are, encourages nature-friendly practices, and spotlights the benefits of creating a rich and diverse environment for native species to thrive.
My role
I was the sole designer on this project and followed a user-centered research and design approach. I conducted market and user research, created sketches, wireframes, and designs, and did usability testing.
Research
Secondary research
To start, I sought to understand why people keep their yards the way they do and how their preferences may be influenced.
I reviewed three research studies and gathered background information on the attitudes and origins of the "ideal American lawn."
“I like what I like”
Unaware of what drives their gardening and landscape practices, homeowners’ preferences can be influenced by marketing, social status, and a perceived obligation to neighbors.
THE AMERICAN LAWN: Examining our Cultural Commitment to an Energy-Intensive Institution (2013) and Exploring social and cultural norms to promote ecologically sensitive residential garden design (2015) both explored the cultural and societal norms that influence everyday landscaping practices within a community. Most people are unaware of the influences that impact these decisions, including social status, perceived obligation to neighbors, decades of successful marketing, and a desire to connect with the outdoors. Both studies reflected the influence of the classic European garden / landscape design as the ideal. This has been adopted in the U.S. and Western Australia despite the fact that these controlled, green, and lush spaces often include non-native species with significant resource requirements (watering, fertilizers, etc.).
Taking a Stand on Clover (2016) spotlighted the influence of marketing on homeowners' perceptions of what makes a "good" and visually pleasing lawn. The introduction of broadleaf pesticides made it necessary to vilify clover despite its benefits to the soil (nitrogen fixing) and support of wildlife (bees and earthworms).
Lessons from citizen science
People’s choices can be influenced by seeing the impact of their behaviors on the natural world.
YardMap Citizen Science Project Front-End Evaluation (2010) outlined the Habitat Network (powered by YardMap), a nine-year project funded by the National Science Foundation and supported through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and in association with the Nature Conservancy. It merged citizen science projects with online social networking and gardening activities.
The web application allowed users to map their own yards or the public spaces in their communities, add details about the features and plants (similar to a traditional landscaping app), and the data was collected by Cornell and shared with the scientific community. The goal was to help make habitats more bird-friendly and increase biodiversity.
A usability evaluation showed there was strong interest in the app by gardeners and avid birders. Reasons given "included having an interest in birding, being able to improve their yard for birds, enjoying participating in citizen science project, and connecting with others."
Users were interested in getting information about how bird-friendly their yard was and saw the impact of their yard practices on birds (potentially extended to other wildlife). Users believed the app's use could increase people's awareness of the impact their landscaping practices have on birds and improve bird-friendliness in their area.
Primary research
I interviewed five home gardeners to learn more about their motivation and approach to gardening. I found that gardeners are a generous group. They’re quick to offer ideas, help, or a plant they just divided. Here are some of their responses:
“If anything holds still long enough, I’ll put a plant in it or on it.”
“I’m on the lawn reduction plan. Part of having perennials and other stuff is not having everything be grass.”
“I’m focusing more on flowers and pollinators and kind of letting the yard go back to nature a bit.”
“I just garden through trial and error. I’m never so heartbroken if something dies. I’ll just rip it up and put in something else.”
Empathy maps
I reviewed the gardeners’ responses and categorized their feedback based on what they think, feel, say, and do to create empathy maps for the two types of users emerging from the research.
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Natural Gardener
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Tidy Gardener
User personas
I found the big differences among the users are their preferred aesthetic and their motivation. Regardless, they all find pleasure and joy in the process of gardening.
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Greta the Eco Gardener
Greta wants to make the planet a better place and starts in her own yard, which is more likely to look a little wild. She wants to attract pollinators and prefers native plants because they better support the local food web.
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Taylor the Tidy Gardener
Taylor’s yard and gardens are neat as a pin, and she loves them to be admired by her neighbors. She prefers native plants because they aren't as much work as non-natives.
Experience
Ideation
I brainstormed different ways to meet the goals and satisfy the users’ needs.
I decided the product’s first priority is to help with gardening essentials:
Help gardeners track the plants in their gardens
Give them ideas for what’s next
Make it simple and personalized
Once these needs are met, it’s more likely the eco-friendly information (e.g. no-till planting; how to build soil) and suggestions (leave your fall leaves!) will be considered.
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Site Map
I put together an initial outline of the screens that would comprise the app.
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User flows
I identified two red routes: the critical paths users must follow to complete their main tasks. For both, a user must set up an account and be able to make edits to their user profile.
Search for garden ideas (Garden Inspiration)
Save and track your garden beds (My Gardens)
Set up and edit your user profile (Profile)
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Garden Inspiration
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My Gardens
Sketches
I drew sketches to create the initial experience and tested with users to get their feedback.
Wireframes
I refined the designs based on user feedback.
There was confusion about the premade garden plans. (I still loved the idea, so I kept it to test it further.)
Gardeners want more filters!
Users loved the slide control for priorities in the user profile, saying it was simple and intuitive.
Brand identity
VERJUR is born
verdure | ver-jer
noun
1: the greenness of growing vegetation
2: a condition of health and vigor
Brand personality
VERJUR is down to earth and likes to get its hands dirty. The process is as satisfying as the outcome.
VERJUR style
The mood board I created reflects the outdoors and the love gardeners have for it. The imagery is colorful, beautiful, and highlights the interconnectivity of nature with people and our living spaces. The colors reflect what you'd find in a meadow or your backyard flower bed. The overall aesthetic is simple, friendly, and uncluttered.
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VERJUR is all about the outdoors and the love gardeners feel about it
Imagery shouldn’t feel like set pieces; they should feel like you could have just walked into your friend’s backyard. The images should celebrate and spotlight the various stages of the gardening journey.
The user interface should include bold, inspiring, and beautiful photos. It should feature intuitive ways to keep plants and gardens organized and encourage discovery.
Final Designs
Usability testing
With VERJUR’s brand identity in place, I created high-fidelity designs and did two rounds of usability testing with five testers in each. The improvements I made from round one to round two include:
Remove the Gardens / Plants toggle in Garden Inspiration
Search for ideas plant by plant (not an entire garden plan)
Include real content in Plant Details to validate what is the right level of detail.
Add “Good companions” to Plant Details
Adjust gardening priorities
Final designs
The final design of VERJUR is simple, organized, and the imagery pops.
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Home
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Garden Inspiration
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Flowers collection
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Edibles collection
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Strawberries collection
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Strawberry variety detail
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Search filters
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Search results
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Plant detail
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My Garden detail
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Plant identity detail
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Profile edit
Lessons
I took away a number of lessons from the VERJUR project.
Be useful
Gardening can be done with little more than a shovel, so a related app has to offer practical help and be useful enough to keep the gardener coming back. The goal is to make the gardener aware of the role they play and the benefits of biodiversity, ecosystems, climate, wildlife, and more. Rather than diving right into “these are all the things you should be doing with your yard,” VERJUR gives gardeners useful information, and over time, it suggests small, simple changes they can make and the related benefits to them and the environment. This means the product looks different than I’d expected it to, but the final version is much more useful, too.
Trust the user
I was enamored with my original design idea of providing complete garden plans, and it made me a little deaf to early user feedback. By engaging users over multiple rounds of usability tests, I got the chance to hear their feedback again, and I incorporated it into the final design.
Make it personal
Users loved having their location, priorities, and preferences taken into account when using the app. Novice gardeners especially liked having plant suggestions based on what they already have in their gardens and where they live.
What’s next?
Additional updates will enhance VERJUR’s usefulness and engage gardeners even more.
Update the Garden Inspiration section to Ideas and change Landscapes to Trees & Shrubs to better align with users’ mental model.
Build out the tracking and reminder experience in My Gardens; users were eager to try out these features during usability testing.
Develop the content hierarchy and sample resources for the Learn section.
As gardeners start to see how their landscape choices impact a yard’s nature friendliness, they will build a novel relationship with the natural world as a living entity. They could use VERJUR to track this progress, share how much of their lawns they’ve reclaimed for native plantings, and help others to create diverse habitats for native species.