Florista

Overview

As a final project of “Google UX Design Specialization -professional course” I was asked to prepare an app design from a random idea generator: https://sharpen.design/

Prompt was: App that lets florists visualize bouquets.

Lucky for me, I happened to have some contacts to local florists, back from the time I was organizing a wedding. During my empathize faze, I discovered how they work, what do they struggle with. I decided to create two personas to reflect two completely defend sides of this business.

Empathise phase

Meet personas:

However, during this process, the idea for an app proved to be completely not what users needed. Florists did not need help creating bouquets. They are professionals passionate about their craft and often investing a lot of time and resources into perfecting their art and learning from other florists. Their clients tempt to trust them. Furthermore, bouquet is a complex 3d form with we perceive with three senses at once: sight, smell and touch. Florists explained that it is impossible for an app to visualize well and give justice to the final product. There are, however, many problems that those professionals struggle with.

Pain points:

• Managing orders. As clients can change mind and ask many questions, it is easy to lose track of things.
• Communication with whole sailer.
• A thing that struck me was how low-tech this business is. Many of the florists lacked any presence on the internet or had websites extremely out of date. One of the reasons for that seamed to be that tools for good online presence seemed too complicated. There was however some need and will for it, as exemplified by the presence of those sites on Facebook. The tool was already known, therefore known and easier to use.

So the idea for the app had to evolve.

Ideate

Features that had to be included:

• Calendar with what is in season
• Calendar for orders of clients
• Flowers accessible at wholesalers
• Search option
• Profile info (for export for website)

The most important measure of app’s success is satisfaction of florists.

Early Prototype

I decided to add a calendar of organized florist community events, because it might be a nice feature, that would help to kindle community spirit. I also realized I forgot about Error screen, with thou hopefully never seen would help users go through error situation without doubting their technical skills.

It was vital that the app is easy to use and is perceived as easy to understand by the users, especially so because they do not perceive them self as very technologically savvy and as such can be easily discouraged. I grouped similar elements together to make use of Gestalt principles, and make finding functions easier.

Test

Prototype

Sticker sheet