Gardening App

Strategic Brief

Background

PeaPod Backyard is a retailer of home gardening tools and supplies. PeaPod Garden® is a Gardeners Companion tool. It offers a database of information for new hobbyist gardeners. The main focus is on care, cultivation, and scheduling. PeaPod Garden® will keep a record of what the user has planted and when it needs care and attention. The user will be able to keep track of their successes and failures with hope to improve results on the next attempt. Users will be able to photograph their gardens and upload the pictures to forums where other users and experts can share experiences with the same plants. PeaPod Garden® will incorporate with a user’s calendar and display planting schedules. PeaPod Garden® will use the activities of the users to suggest relevant products and articles. Users might use PeaPod Garden® indoors when researching plants, in stores when considering seeds to buy, or outdoors in their own garden. PeaPod Garden® will direct users to stores which carry PeaPod Backyard products, or links to online retailers.

Objectives

PeaPod Garden® will entice users to shop at PeaPod Backyard, and become members of the rewards programs, thus creating repeat shoppers. PeaPod Garden® will serve as a low-stress how-to guide for new gardeners who may be intimidated by the hobby at first. PeaPod Garden® will also help address the seemingly complicated planting and watering schedule necessary to maintain a garden. PeaPod Garden® will be considered successful if it retains users from spring to fall. Ideally, it will become a thriving hub of information sharing among gardeners. PeaPod Backyard will experience a growing portion of their profits come from sales directed by PeaPod Garden® and will receive a greater understanding of their customers.

Competition

SowingCalendar - A sowing / harvest guide that will help you with your gardening throughout the year. This app is ad-supported, so it is free to use. It seems to have some good information, but its layout is dated and has room to improve. Users complain it is very North America centric in its information, which is a problem for a hobby such as gardening which is popular worldwide.

Garden Time Planner by Burpee - the perfect tool to help gardeners know when to sow, transplant and expect to harvest vegetables and herbs specific to their garden region. This app is connected with an established gardening supplier. It appears much more developed and well-designed aesthetically, but users complain about its connectivity problems. It seems that an outdoor- centric app is hindered by connection issues.

PeaPod Garden® should focus primarily on user experience and avoid the pitfall of feature creep and reliance on constant connection. This app should assume the user might be a rural homesteader who has limited to no data beyond their wifi connection. PeaPod Garden® should also take great care to ensure its information is not limited to one region or climate.

Target Audience

Users will be middle-aged adults who may be raising a family. They will own homes or live in areas with urban gardens cooperatives. They will have significant interest in eco-friendly lifestyles. They will be interested in health and wellness issues. Users will romanticize the past and the rural lives of their ancestors but will eagerly admit that technology and the internet have improved society immeasurably. The target may not be especially interested in social media or general internet culture, but they will embrace new technology especially if it fits into their green lifestyle.

PeaPod Garden® will meet their needs by being very unobtrusive. Users can interact with PeaPod Garden® to research or read articles and comment threads at length, or they can just set their watering schedule and move on. PeaPod Garden® will only pop up alerts for actual events of consequence, and not simply to draw attention or push discounts unless the user actively selects this.

User Details

Senior, Middle age, or Young Adult
Raising a family or empty nest retirees
Owns a home or has access to a garden to maintain
Eco-Conscious
Not technologically minded, but smart enough to learn new skills
Needs to keep track of several schedules in addition to the garden. § Interested in learning how to expand their garden hobby

Activities List

Some of the activities accomplished through this app include

Creating a planting/watering/harvesting schedule in the user’s calendar
Reading professional advice and articles
Reading and commenting on Q&A forums
Suggesting additional tools and products to the user based on their garden
Learning about preserving/freezing crops
Watching weather reports for significant weather events
Taking and sharing photos of plants

Feature list

Photograph a plant and identify it in the database
Location data indicates if a plant is suitable to your garden’s climate
Local weather affects garden maintenance schedule (don’t have to water if its raining)
Can use text, calendar, or other phone update systems to alert user
Post photos of progress to social media

Technical considerations

Apple offers PeaPod Garden® developers a vast multipage resource dictating the myriad ways in which an app must adhere to certain criteria in order to meet the high expectations of PeaPod Garden® Store. PeaPod Backyard must ensure that PeaPod Garden® fits all the requirements from top to bottom. This is not only mandatory, but also it has been established that these limitations enhance the user experience and force developers to ensure their app does not neglect anything. The typeface and colour options are all well dictated by Apple. The design aesthetic is wise to remain predominantly white with high contrast elements that work within colourblindess gamut.

Creative considerations

PeaPod Backyard is known for gardening. It would be wise to reinforce the timeless, old- fashioned nature of horticulture in every design aspect. Earth-tones and muted greens should appear throughout. The complexity of plants’ appearance means the references should be iconic in nature wherever possible, avoiding photorealism. Typeface choices should match advertising styles of the 19th century, specifically anything in the agricultural field. The temptation to put vine imagery or leaves on everything should be avoided.

Creative context

PeaPod Garden® should be released at springtime. Prospective users will see grocery stores set up their garden centers in the spring, and thing that they should get started planting their own garden this year. A well-timed ad campaign for PeaPod Backyard could encourage new users to passively enroll in a multi-part system that comprises 1) PeaPod Backyard Garden Tools and Supplies, 2) PeaPod Backyard App, 3) PeaPod Backyard Curated Forums and Databases. By creating a profile and tracking their purchases, location, and planting schedule, PeaPod Backyard can more effectively tailor their marketing strategy moving forward.