Introduction

In the end of Milestone 2, we decided our concepts to stimulate a virtual environment for plant lovers for them to better interact with plants. Based on the three concepts and ideas we have from Milestone 2, we did further research and analysis based on the feedback we have from the class. We were still confused about which solutions could be the best practice to solve the problems of our target users. We would do quick prototypes and conduct user enactments to further understand what users feel about our solutions, methods and technologies to optimize concepts with better user experience.

Study Design

Research Method

Our team utilized User Enactments to research our target audience’s interactions with the product.

Purpose and Preparation

We spend some time to determine our design dimensions:

Botanical Garden, National Park, and Friend’s Garden

Then we work on the Speed Dating Matrix to further break our ideas into different stages and summarize the details of interactions and technologies in each stages. We highlighted the most important interactions and technologies we were going to have further analysis.

To let the participants clearly understand the process, we divided the interactions into different scenarios: Navigate, Add, and Check.

Navigate

• App sends out notification if users get closer to the pre tagged plants.
  • Research Questions:

Adding

• Physically adding “tag” sensor in soil
  • Research Questions:
  • How do you feel about this interaction method? Any problem?
  • Would you find this useful?
  • How fast/slow do you find this interaction?
• NFC/Wi-Fi/RFID that allows users to easily access the plants (by tagging the phone directly or receiving notification of whether they want to add this plant to your virtual garden)
  • Research Questions:
  • How do you feel about this interaction method? Any problem?
  • Is it easy for you to understand/follow the instructions?
• Use AR technology to recognize the plants in the friend’s garden and add those plants to the virtual garden
  • Research Questions:
  • How do you feel about this interaction?
  • Would you find this useful?
  • What do you think of this technology?
    • Would you prefer AR technology or an interface on your phone?

Checking

• Compare two types of technology for growing tagged plants
  • Two dimensions of comparisons
    • Growing plant from found state (adult) vs. growing plant from seed
    • Growing plant with user tasks vs. no user tasks
  • Growing tagged plant from found state in botanical garden in AR in home
    • User has no tasks - plant grows automatically
    • User has tasks - compares original plant environment and tells user to make changes (“turn the heat up! Add more sunlight”)
    • Research Questions:
      • How to display the environment in AR? Is AR a good fit?
      • What factors of the environment should be taken into consideration?
      • Do you think the process is fluent and easy to understand?
  • Growing tagged plant from seed in AR in home
    • User has no tasks - plant grows automatically
    • User has tasks - compares original plant environment and tells user to make changes (“turn the heat up! Add more sunlight”)
    • Research Questions:
      • What do you think about this process/interaction?
      • Do you think the process is fluent and easy to understand?
      • Do you think it is the interaction you want?
      • Do you think it is ok to use AR technology for this part?