Whiteboarding | Growing garden
Growing garden, growing business
Prompt
The prompt is from this article by Dan Shilov.
Growing gardens, growing business
Prompt: Growing Gardens targets suburban families who are interested in gardening but have little to no formal knowledge. The business primarily sells plants but is also extending into additional products (pots, fertilizer) and services (landscaping). Create an application to help people learn more about gardening and getting them to [sic].
Assessment: as an interviewer I’d like to see how you think about the opportunity space, which platform you decide to use for this prompt, and how you balance user and business needs.
Why
Urban gardens are on the rise. People are reconnecting to nature. People are also interested in sourcing and the origin of their food. A business that enables them to grow their own plants and foods makes the city greener and empowers people to reconnect to nature and, potentially, to their food.
In the suburbs, people often have space in their backyards for gardening.
Who
Young working families with a child or two who have decided to utilize the space in their backyard or front yard to grow plants.
When & where
These families are primarily interested by aesthetics. Maybe by involving their children on a learning journey about nature. They are looking for a side project where they can learn, see progress and potentially brag about their accomplishments to friends.
Gardening can be hard however. It’s easy to forget when to water plants and what type of soil they need. Hence the gardener needs are the following:
1/ As a gardener, I want to know how to best take care of my plant (when to water it, which soil to use, what pot is best for the plant’s life cycle).
2/ As a gardener, I want to learn which plants look and co-exist best next to each other
3/ As a gardener, I want to be able to track share my progress with friends
4/ As a gardener, I want to be able to easily buy the right pot, soil, seed I’m interested in
5/ As a gardener I want inspiration to start my garden
The business needs are as dollows:
1/ Sell landscaping services
2/ Sell pots, fertilizers, seeds, plants
3/ Activation and retention. Activation can be defined as buying a plant or seed and retention as buying additional products or even a subscription to the Growing garden service.
What
An app that inspires gardeners and guides them on the gardening journey. The app could present different types of gardens for the gardener to choose from. The app could also offer landscaping services as an alternative to the gardener doing things themselves.
The app would offer a way to identify the plant the gardener owns and offer guidance about the best soil, seed etc. to buy to continue taking care of it.
Solve
The journey is as follows:
a/ The user lands on an inspiration surface
b/ The user picks a garden type and either chooses to get in touch with a landscaping service or buy the plants themselves
c/ The user buys the plant
d/ The user can also access a store for all available products
Hence, the IA should offer:
1\ a store area
2\ an inspiration area
3\ a profile where the gardener can document and share their progress for their garden and for each individua plant
One rednering of the app could be the following:
A\ The store has a camera in search which could help identify plants through machine learning or, if they were sold by garden growing, through a QR code. The store would then lead the user to a product page with information about the plant.
Missing:
1/ Product page for plants
2/ What the “start yoru garden” page becomes after a user started their garden. Or whether that page should simply be part of the onboarding. This makes me think I should focus on the onboarding rather than the app IA.
Measure
We would measure:
1/ ARPU per user
2/ Retention and activation
3/ Completion of the “start your garden” flow
