PlantPal
Role: User Interface Designer
Duration: 6 weeks
Team: Individual
Tools: Figma
This prototype was created for my user interface design course taken at Kennesaw State University. Our goal with this project was to create a prototype that incorporated over 20 different design principles.
Because the principles that we were taught in our course focused on memorization, I decided to create a tutorial. PlantPal is a micro learning tool that helps users learn how to take care of beginner friendly plants.
Project Goals
When working on this project, I had three main goals in mind:
Create an interface that shows my understanding of and incorporates all the design principles that were taught.
Produce a smooth and intuitive navigation experience to help users learn about plants.
Demonstrate I could reflect feedback given to me by my instructors and peers.
My Process
Proposal
Before we started to work on our ideas, we wrote a page long proposal to our professor for approval. In my proposal, I defined each design principal taught and explained how I would integrate them into my design. Once we we had our proposals approved, we could move on to the next step in the process: project development.
Project Development
During project development, we prototyped a rough draft before we moved on to the refinement stage. It was important during this stage to try and incorporate as many design principles as possible.
Refinement
Once we were done prototyping, we received feedback from our peers and our professor. It was crucial to implement this feedback into our next iterations of the design until we reached our final product.
User Interface Design Principles
Multimedia Principle
The Multimedia Principle states that people learn better when there are images and text, instead of just text. I integrated this principle into my design by making sure I have plenty of images with graphics to help the user learn better.
Zeigarnick Effect
The Zeigarnik Effect states that people remember tasks that are incomplete more than tasks that have already been completed. I took this into consideration by adding a progress bar at the top of my interface in the form of leaves.
Miller’s Law
Miller’s Law explains people can only store 7 plus or minus 2 things in their working or short-term memory at a time. Working memory holds what we think of in the current moment. I kept this law in mind when designing by only including 5 care instructions per plant.
Final Prototype
Retrospective
When completing this project, I was able to learn a lot throughout my design process. A struggle that I ran into when creating this project was integrating the Zeigarnick Effect. I wanted to do something unique, so I found it difficult to incorporate a conventional progress bar while also being creative.
Something that stuck out to me was that design principles are considered in almost every interface and can help designers guide their design choices. It is important to consider the users’ psychology and needs, especially when it comes to design principles that focus on the users’ memory. This can ultimately create a seamless and intuitive experience in my design.