FLORAFLOW | HCD CASE STUDY

Florist workflow management assistant: from inventory and trends, to data-driven decision making.

This was my final project for the Human-Centred Design module at my university. The brief required us to pick a career and solve an issue that people in this job face in their day to day. Because of my love for flowers, I chose florists as my audience 🌷

Although the work of florists might seem quite straightforward, there is a lot of time-consuming backend manual work that needs to be done in their day to day. FloraFlow aims to streamline this process, improving the efficiency of their daily workflow.

DISCIPLINE

User Research
Branding
UX/UI Design
Prototyping

TEAM

Independent project

OUTCOME

Conceptualized Product
+ Process Book
(and I got an A!!)

TIMELINE

Mar 2024 - May 2024

THE PROJECT BRIEF

For this project, we want you to centre the experiences of workers. Using human-centred design processes, research the daily challenges of a career that interests you, and understand its unique challenges and ways of working. Identify a design challenge, and develop a design proposal that aims to address this challenge.

INITIAL BRAINSTORM

Some first thoughts 💭

Starting with some quick secondary research, I began to understand some of these day-to-day challenges that florists might face. I stumbled upon some interesting issues that I grouped together in a mindmap.

The issues mainly fit into the themes of inventory management, perishability, and availability; industry competition; and finding inspiration.

AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHICS

Do florists in different demographics operate differently?

Whilst researching, I realized that what a job entails often varies by location, so I decided to narrow down my audience towards either florists in London or Hong Kong, as these are the places I am most familiar with.

Most London florists belong to relay organizations, which means they already have a bigger support system in place. Hence, I decided to explore the floral industry in Hong Kong, which seemed to be dominated by more independent businesses.

USER RESEARCH

What does my audience say?

With a specific audience in mind, I thought it would be easiest for me to learn more about their challenges by directly speaking to people within this demographic. I got in contact with 7 florists based in Hong Kong who were willing to be interviewed.

After the discussion, I found that the main pain points were managing their time, clients, and resources; keeping up with trends; and the competitiveness of the floral industry.

OBSERVATION

Taking a closer look 👀

Some of the florists were also kind enough to send me photos of their flower inventory and workspace. These photos acted as visuals for me to better understand their work process, and potentially act as evidence for their challenges.

DRAWING CONCLUSIONS

So what are the biggest challenges the florists face?

From all my primary and secondary research, I had gathered a list of nine challenges. As I couldn't solve all of the them within the scope of this project, I decided to let the florists rank which they most want solved.

This resulted in the final three biggest challenges florists face: keeping up with trends, stock management, and finding inspiration.

IDEA DEVELOPMENT

My initial explorations ✏️

The brief encouraged us to explore a variety of products, so my first goal was to prioritize the quantity of designs, as I would be able to further iterate the designs later on. I then selected three strongest designs to develop and seek further feedback on.

FINAL CONCEPT

A digital platform to help florists with inventory management, with data such as stock levels, purchase dates, lifespan, and reorder points and link to suppliers. The platform will also analyze sales data and allow florists to search and learn about current trends, and the system will make suggestions for inventory based on the data.

USER PERSONAS

After further communication with the florists, 3 of the 7 I had been in contact with agreed to continue giving feedback on my work. Based on the profiles of these florists, I created three personas of potential users.

COMPETITIOR ANALYSIS

Before continuing with the concept, I wanted to make sure my product was not already on the market. I looked into three apps offering similar services and noted down the features they had, and also features I could include in my own product.

DESIGN PROCESS

I mapped out all the features and pages I had in mind for the product, outlining the information architecture and elements of each page. This helped a lot with ensuring I didn't t miss anything when designing.

USER FLOW

I created a user flow to get a better visual reference on what I would have to create and every possible way users would interact with my app. I realized it would be worth having the inventory/trends insights on its own page, so it would be more easily accessible.

LOW-FIDELITY WIREFRAMES

After some more discussion with the florists, I started sketching low fidelity wireframes and visualizing what the screens could look like.

FINAL PRODUCT

ADDITIONAL SCREENS

All orders

New order

Draft orders

Favourite species

Product list

Product information

BRANDING

FloraFlow's logo design and branding! 🌷

FINAL REFLECTION

Research, research, and research!

I spent the vast majority of my time in this process just speaking to my audience before designing the product, and it gave me a much deeper appreciation for research. It really helped me keep them at the heart of my product and gave me a clear picture of what to do when designing.

This was also my first time creating a desktop application. Although it was more challenging than expected it was a good opportunity to practice how to best present a large amount of information as simply and clearly as possible. For future development I think user testing with the final prototype would be crucial, as this was something I didn't do much of.

Thanks for reaching the end! 👋

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