Rotofarm

Rebranding | UI/UX Design | Art Direction

Project Overview

Rotofarm is an advanced hydroponic indoor garden that is fully mobile application automated and grows your favorite vegetables, herbs and micro-greens using less space, water and energy. It is currently a Kickstarter project funded by the company, Bace, located in Australia.

Contributers

Jake Kropp: Research, Branding, Trademark, Ad Campaigns and Packaging

Kierra Simmons: Research, Branding, Website and Mobile Application

Challenge

Rotofarm needs a rebrand of their current website, connected mobile application and branding material to match their clean and interesting design of their high-tech farm.

Execution

The outcome of this project was to design a user-friendly website that advertises Rotofarm and its branded products. And a mobile application, that tracks the plant growth information and offers resources and shopping experience similar to the website. Also create promotional material and product design for the brand.

RESEARCH

User Personas

After initial research for the project and understanding more about the company. Personas were created based of the unknown elements in regards to gardening and interviews taken from a gardening club located in Austin, Texas on potential users for this specific product. It is currently a Kickstarter project designed by the company called Bace, located in Australia.

Empathy Map

To have a better understanding of a garden user and their needs based on their lifestyle or other factors, an empathy map had to be created to help identify someone’s gardening history and how they will approach technology in their traditional environment.

How Might We Questions

To define the design direction to both prototypes, areas of focus were identified to help create How Might We Statements. Following the creation of these statements, different solutions were questioned based on the initial persona creations and empathy map to see how effectively they answered these problems and what features needed to be prioritized.

Feature Prioritization

After creating How Might We Statements, key features needed to be taken into consideration for the website and mobile application that offered different design solutions for the problems identified in the earlier stages of research.

User Flow Map

To be able to begin designing effective prototypes, a basic understanding or user flow had to be created of how someone such as our empathy map example would go through the initial purchase of the farm and continued use.

Wireframe and Low-Fidelity Prototypes

After creating a few iterations of the website and mobile application, user testing on the user experience began by using quick wireframes and refining the low-fidelity prototypes based on responses. These tests helped identify structural UI design problems through feedback and helped answer How Might We statement problems that needed to be solved during the earlier research stage.

IDENTITY

BRANDING

Website

Mobile Application

Key Features

These are the highlights of the mobile applications such as onboarding, farm customization, growth tracker, etc.

Onboarding

These are the first screens a user will view after installing the application, allowing them to register themselves and connect their farm through a QR code located on the instructions or by the product number on the farm itself. Or what a current user sees before logging back into their account.

Farm Customization

This allows for the user to add specific plants to their Rotofarm to monitor their growth progress and watering schedule. Also it shows the different plants that the Rotofarm can grow based on it’s branded seed pods.

Plant Information

This is a selected plant screen based on the user’s farm slots in the Rotofarm, where you can view growth progress, water tracker, information about the plant, take photos and find similiar plants.

Learning Resources

This tab allows for users to read beginner plant owner articles and tips, since this farm is designed for first-time gardeners.

Shop Tab

This allows for users to have an easier way to purchases seeds on their phone without having to go on the website and immediately purchase once their farm’s plant finishes growing and they want to restock on seed pods.