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Dewit - Plant Watering App
Overview
Dewit is a plant care tracking & sharing app.
It allows:
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Users to categorise plants by location within their home.
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Identify plants using AI and track water needs.
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Share watering needs with other app users.
Role: UX Designer & Researcher
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Adobe CC, Pencil & Paper (and Coffee)
UX Research
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Background
Dewit is a plant care tracking app with an emphasis on simplicity and focus on watering alone. The platform is subscription free with in app advertisements.
Research Goals
To explore how younger plant owners balance watering routines, especially when traveling or sharing plant care, and to uncover how a minimal, watering-focused tool can support consistency and reduce stress in plant maintenance.
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Methodologies
Competative Analysis
User Interviews
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User Interviews
"Keep your plants alive!"
Planta - Plant Care App
Features
Strengths
Weaknesses
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Premium membership
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Limited feature free version
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AI plant identification
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Schedule sharing
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Watering reminders
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Onboarding process
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Light meter
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Plant health diagnosis
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Plant care guides
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Notification control
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Clear brand, clean modern UI.
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Quick to get started after download.
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Schedule sharing.
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Almost all features locked behind pay walls, expensive.
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No onboarding
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Confusing navigation bar with non standard icons, often leading to paywalls
"Botanist in your pocket"
Picture This - Plant Identifier
Features
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Premium membership
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Limited feature free version
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AI plant identification
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Watering reminders
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Onboarding process
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Light meter
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Water need calculator
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Plant health diagnosis
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Extensive plant care guides
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Notification control
Strengths
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Many useful features like the light meter, plant identifier and water need calculator are free.
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Extensive guidance and information on your plants.
Weaknesses
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Some features and guidance locked behind pay walls.
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UI is very busy and confusing.
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No schedule sharing.
"Keep your plants happy and thriving"
Plant Parent - Plant Care Guide
Features
Strengths
Weaknesses
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Premium membership
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AI plant identification
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Watering reminders
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Onboarding process
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Light meter
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Plant health diagnosis
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Plant care guides
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Notification control
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Many useful features like the light meter, plant identifier and water need calculator.
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Relatively cheap membership.
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A lot of guidance and information on your plants.
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No free version.
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No schedule sharing.
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Busy, confusing UI.
4 Users were identified, all current/past users of plant watering apps. All interviews were conducted remotely using google meets.
Affinity Mapping
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Research Findings
Functionality vs Simplicity
Most apps I've tried are really spammy, they give you too many options when I just need basic guidance.
I'm not great with plants, so I need to know roughly what to do to keep them alive. The less reading the better.
I like having some info about the plant, but I don’t want to scroll through endless guidance & tips.
I got overwhelmed when I first opened my plant app, way too much advice and notifications. Icons that made no sense.
Freedom to share schedules
I love having plants but I'm often away and my friends are bit useless with looking after them!
Its hard to explain how much to water each individual plant, especially to people who don't have plants.
My partner and I always overwater, because he has no idea when I've watered them.
I don't want to share my log in details for an app, and they often don't want to download one just to water my plants.
Monetisation Strategy
If i hit enough paywalls I just uninstall the app, I don't care enough to have a subscription.
I'd prefer an occasional ad over a forced year subscription, but only if the ads aren't annoying.
'Free' apps are just full of unusable features and adverts for the full version.
If there is a subscription, I want to be able to trial it beforehand. I don't know if I'll like it enough
Additional Findings
The notifications can be so annoying, I don't want to open the app to update or cancel reminders.
Making silly names for my plants is more fun, also helps me remember which is which.
Watering plants should be relaxing, I'd want a relaxing app.
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Personas
The Frequent Traveller
Goals
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Share plant care with friends/family.
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Keep plants alive while travelling.
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Track plant care digitally in real time.
Frustrations
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Returning home to dead/overwatered plants.
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Explaining what different plants need to others.
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Not knowing if plants are being looked after.
36 y/o - Marketing Manager
Bio
Kaitlin is always travelling for work, but she loves having a house full of plants when she's home. She struggles to find someone to reliably take care of her plants while away and hates leaving loads of instructions & notes.
Frequently used apps
The New Plant Parent
Goals
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Avoid more monthly subscriptions.
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Find a low effort plant care reminder.
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Reliably keep plants alive.
Frustrations
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Overwaters or forgets to water plants.
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New to plant care and overwhelmed easily.
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Paywalls and confusing UI.
27 y/o - Software Engineer
Bio
Omar recently started collecting houseplants and loves his home to feel a bit more alive, but his plants often look like they are dying and he's not sure why. He's tried plant care apps but just gets frustrated with the over complicated features and paywalls.
Frequently used apps
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Competative Analysis
Hover
Overwhelm is common, simplicity is key
Fewer features and clear UI/onboarding could be a powerful offering.
Users want to share their schedules
Many users travel and need a way to share their schedule in real time without sharing credentials.
Subscriptions dominate the market
Most plant care apps are subscription based, unintrusive ads and a simpler feature offering could be attractive.
Hover
UX Design
Business Goals
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To gain new users.
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To quickly teach users how the app works and its benefits.
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Retain users and generate revenue via ads.
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Get their app to market with MVP (minimum viable product) and update over time.
User Goals
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To keep plants alive.
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To share plant care with others.
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To learn a good plant care routine that fits into their daily routine.
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To learn a new skill.
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To get customisable reminders/prompts when plants need tending.
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Design an intuitive and engaging onboarding experience.
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Launch a minimum viable product (MVP) quickly with essential features.
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Encourage consistent app engagement to retain users
Project Goals
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Project Goals
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Features Roadmap
P1
Must have
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Sign Up & Onboarding
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Plant Identification via Photo (AI Recognition)
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Add & Organize Plants by Space(Home)/Area(Bedroom)
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Smart Watering Reminders / Schedule
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Ad-Based Monetization (User-Controlled)
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Dashboard / Home Screen
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Shared Care / Collaborative Schedules
P2
Should have
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Custom Notification Timing
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One tap notification "mark as completed"
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Offline Mode
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User photos, nicknames, and quick notes (e.g., “gets dry fast”).
P3
Nice to have
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Gamified Rewards (e.g., streaks, badges for consistent watering)
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Integration with Weather Data (auto-adjust watering based on local conditions)
P4
Can come later
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Fertilizing / Repotting Scheduling
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Automatic AI health diagnosis on adding plant.
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Customisable interface (reduce or increase features on nav bar)
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User Flows
I’ve immediately identified my key user flows:
• Water Plants (through notification or opening app)
• Share Schedule
The idea here was that for my identified users to be able to actively use the application, they needed to be able to water their plants and share those schedules with friends, family, or house sitters.
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Information Architecture
I’ve built a sitemap considering primary, secondary and tertiary navigation.
Firstly, I’ve developed the primary navigation by defining which main actions users might have taken: Water, Schedule, Spaces and Share. Secondly, I’ve explored and expanded each one of the those sections.
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Task Flows
After designing key user flows, I turned my focus to task flows. In particular Sign up and Onboarding. I decided it would be appropriate to allow users to skip or follow a guided setup with more explanation on how the app worked. This gave good clarity on the number of stages that would be required for a sufficiently useful onboarding tutorial.
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Wireframes
Moving on to my first wireframes I created a more refined version of the home page and expanding menu. This would be the key hub of the app where the user would first arrive and access any the key flows (water, schedule, spaces and share). I decided to keep the lower navigation bar minimalist, with the intention to allow customisation (addition of shortcuts to preferred areas) at a later stage. This kept the UI simple and overwhelm/learning curve to a minimum.
UI Design
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High Fidelity Mockups
AI Generated
AI Generated
AI Generated
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Brand Identity
The focus of the app was on watering, simplicity and ecapsulating all of our users plant care needs. Because of this i wanted the logo to be a water droplet with a plant growing within. I began by sketching out some rough ideas.
Once I had an idea I liked I used AI to generate a few versions based on that sketch, through 3 prompts I was able to get some good inspiration (like the additional smaller water droplet) for the design which I then hand illustrated.
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Design System
I’ve created a colour palette with 1 primary, 2 secondary and 2 neutral colours. For typography I went with a combination of Tilt Warp and Roboto. Tilt Warp for stylised headings and Roboto for good legibility on smaller text.
With those elements added to my low fidelity wireframes, I made my way into high-fidelity wireframes.
Usability Testing
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Prototype
As I've mainly worked with components and variants throughout the entire project it was quite straightforward to build up the prototype.
In order to keep the flow nice and neat, I’ve mainly used the same mild transition effect for every screen except for the end of sign up transitions and when first reaching the end of the guided setup, where I went for a slower fade effect to give the idea that something new is about to start.
Additionally, I built a water droplet loading animation to make the prototype experience more realistic.
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Findings
Overall, usability testing was useful and satisfying. The general flow proved to be viable. I made a few fixes that aimed at facilitating an even smoother process.
Worked Well
General flow
Onboarding Process
Colour palette and minimalist UI
Sign up process
Needs Improving
Onboarding 'renaming' not obvious what is happening
How do I add more details about the plant? pot size etc.
Did the profile photo upload work?
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Iterations
#1
Some users were confused by the lack of detail they could add about the plant, like pot size, plant size etc. So I added a tooltip to give a bit more information on how the plant watering needs are calculated and where further details can be added.
#2
Some users commented on the upload not giving feedback, its assumed its worked rather than confirmed. To clarify this I added 'upload successful' after image upload.
#3
In the prototype you originally clicked the space and the name would change, users didn't understand that this was supposed to indicate they, the user had edited this and typed the new name. To make this clear I added a keyboard pop up when selecting the space for renaming.
