The Secret Life of Plants
Design a plant walk interface that cultivates a love of plants immediately around UT's Art building.
I created a comic-style plant walk around UT’s Art Building to make learning about local plants fun and engaging. The playful format encourages people to slow down, notice, and connect with the landscape while turning an ordinary walk into a memorable experience.
I began with user research, creating a persona to understand needs and motivations. From there, I ideated and prototyped in Figma, refining how the comic could guide attention and spark curiosity. Finally, I implemented the design using HTML and CSS to bring the interactive experience to life.
I started with an autoethnography, which involved walking through the space and paying attention to how we were interacting with the trees and plants. I noticed that the most engaging moments happened while we were learning about the plants, which gave me a good starting point. I also realized that while we were paying attention, we hadn’t quite reached a deeper level of connection—that became a goal for my interface.
Next, I created a persona to better understand who I was designing for. This helped me see the main motivations: wanting to understand, wanting to take part, and wanting to enjoy the walk. Keeping these needs in mind gave me direction on how the interface should feel and what it should offer.
I then mapped out the user’s journey. The strongest moments of focus and enjoyment seemed to come during and after learning about the plants. Since that’s also when curiosity and appreciation keep growing, I designed the interface to spend more time in that stage of the experience.
Using my research, I formulated a central design question: