Website · Mobile App · UX/UI · AI Product
SmartPlant
SmartPlant® (the website and brand) and GardenSage™, its AI plant-care companion, designed together as one experience that turns “why is my plant dying?” into clear, confident, everyday care.
Role
Product Design (UX/UI)
Surfaces
Website · iOS App
Built with
WordPress · Claude Code · Figma
Year
2025
The challenge
SmartPlant partnered with The App Chefs on two surfaces of one product: the SmartPlant® website, where people first discover the brand, its retailer and grower partnerships, and download the app, and GardenSage™, the AI plant-care companion inside the iOS app. Plant care is full of guesswork (a wilting leaf, a yellow spot, a plant that just stops growing), and most people don't know if the fix is water, light, or something worse. The goal was one coherent experience, from the first visit to the site to daily care in the app, that makes expert-level guidance feel as easy as asking a knowledgeable friend.
As Lead Product Designer, I owned the SmartPlant® website (built on WordPress) end to end, and the full GardenSage™ mobile experience: identifying the real jobs-to-be-done behind plant care, shaping the AI flow across photo, voice, and text, and building one design system calm and trustworthy enough (on web and in the app) for people to actually rely on.
Research & Discovery
Every SmartPlant release starts the same way: a discovery session with the team to map where plant parents actually get stuck: not a missed watering reminder, but not knowing what's wrong or not trusting a generic answer.
From there, nothing ships blind. Each new version goes through a focus group to react to the direction, then a moderated usability test to validate the flow before it ever reaches the App Store.
That loop is what shaped features like the Care Calendar, the confidence score on Plant ID, and the structured GardenSage™ answer format: they exist in their current form because real plant parents used earlier versions and told us where they got confused.
What I did
Mapped the plant-parent journey and found the real trigger moment: people open the app when something looks wrong, not on a schedule, so GardenSage™ leads, not a static dashboard.
Designed the GardenSage™ AI flow across three inputs (photo, voice, and typed question), so any way someone naturally asks “what's wrong with my plant” gets one clear, structured answer instead of a wall of text.
Added a visible confidence score to Plant ID results (not a black-box guess) after usability testing showed people didn't trust an answer they couldn't verify.
Built the Care Calendar and My Plants library so ongoing care feels like a routine, not a research project every time.
Partnered tightly with engineering (The App Chefs) on a Scrum/Agile cadence: Discovery → Design → Usability Test → Development → Ship, repeating with every release.
How someone actually uses it
Open SmartPlant®
Location-aware Home shows today's weather and what's due on the Care Calendar.
Two ways in
Search or scan a plant
Look up a specific species by name or barcode.
Ask GardenSage™
Any question, in whatever way is natural to ask it.
One structured answer
A Plant ID with a visible confidence score, a categorized care answer, or a recommended plant list, never a wall of text.
Save to My Plants
Added to an Indoor/Outdoor-filtered library for ongoing care.
Care Calendar reminders bring them back to Home for the next check-in, closing the loop.
Key screens
The Website: SmartPlant®
Home: Stop Guessing. Start Growing.
The site's job is to earn trust fast: what GardenSage™ does, in one line, with the app right there to download; no digging for it.
SmartPlant® for Business
A second audience, a second flow: retailers and growers get their own value prop (foot traffic and consumer-demand data) without diluting the consumer story above it.
GardenSage™ App: Expert Plant Care in Your Pocket
A dedicated landing page for the app itself, leading with real proof: 50k+ plant varieties, 1M+ happy plant parents, a 4.8 App Store rating, before ever asking for a download.
Retailer Solutions: three tools, one ecosystem
Retailers don't just get an app integration; they get three integrated tools spanning customer-facing engagement to back-of-house inventory intelligence, framed as one connected system.
Plant Manager, with the numbers to back it up
340 retailers & growers, 12M+ SKUs managed, 50k+ plant varieties covered: the platform's own landing page leads with real scale instead of a features list.
The App: GardenSage™
Home, personalized
A personal greeting, local weather, and a nearby retailer partner set the tone, then one unified “Ask GardenSage™ anything” bar with photo and voice built right in, so there's no separate flow to learn.
Plant ID by photo
Snap a photo, get an instant ID with a visible confidence score, plus a plain-language care tip, not just a Latin name to look up later.
GardenSage™, in context
Photo Analysis doesn't just identify the plant; it reasons about where it's placed and recommends what to do next, in the voice of a knowledgeable friend.
Structured expert answers
Every GardenSage™ answer is broken into scannable sections (Planting, Watering, Fertilizing…) instead of a paragraph wall, built so care advice actually gets followed, not just read.
Talk to GardenSage™
A voice-first flow with suggested prompts, so people who don't know what to ask still know how to start the conversation.
My Plants library
An Indoor/Outdoor-filterable collection that turns “a bunch of plants” into a system people actually maintain.
Real numbers, real users.
0M+
Active users across the SmartPlant ecosystem
0M+
Datapoints powering plant recommendations
0.0★
App Store rating from real plant parents
0+
Years of combined horticultural expertise built into GardenSage™
“Both the GardenSage™ app and our new site have generated positive feedback from every direction: our team, our users, and our partners.”
Bert Wahlen
Founder · SmartPlant®