/portfolio

PlantPal

UX Certificate Coursework / 2024

UX Research

Wireframing

Prototyping

UX Foundation Project

Where I learned the language of UX.

The Project

PlantPal is a plant care companion app I designed as part of my UX certification, my first end-to-end UX project after transitioning from architecture. The problem was self-selected: new plant owners often struggle to keep their plants alive, not because they don't care, but because the guidance available online is fragmented, generic, and rarely tied to what they actually have on their windowsill.

I chose to include this project in my portfolio not because it's my strongest work, but because it's the foundation everything else is built on.

PlantPal is where I learned the vocabulary of UX (personas, journey maps, wireframes, usability testing) and where I first practiced translating my architectural instinct for user movement into digital flows.

The Process

I ran the project through a full double-diamond process: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test. Along the way, I built two personas grounded in interviews with beginner and experienced plant owners, mapped their journeys to identify where care information broke down, and used How-Might-We statements to focus scope before ideating features. Wireframes progressed from low-fi sketches to mid-fi mockups to high-fidelity screens in Figma, tested with users at each stage.

The most useful thing I learned in this project wasn't a method, it was the discipline of not skipping steps. I came in wanting to jump to high-fi screens immediately. The certification forced me to sit in the research and the wireframing longer than felt comfortable. Every project since has benefited from that patience.