Go Greens, GoReens!

Landing Frame
Dashboard Frame
Dashboard Frame - Filter Pop Up
Plant Info Frame
Saved (Favorite) Plant Frame
My Garden (Tracking your own plants)
My Garden - Reminder Pop Up
Activities Frame
Profile Frame

Inspiration

A Chinese woman named Li Ziqi who moved to the countryside from the city and makes videos about surviving off the natural resources around her and relying on herself to live. From building furniture from hand to creating traditional feasts from her own garden, she proves that many people do not truly know where their food comes from in modern society. Growing up in the urban city or suburbs, one instantly seeks the grocery store when in need of food, or the convenience store for a quick drink, or the drug store for medicine, etc. Without a doubt, society’s reliance on stores for all their needs is almost an epidemic—just how many people do you know, including yourself, know how to rely on your surroundings to sustain yourself?

Another common saying is: “I can’t be trusted with taking care of a plant, I could kill a cactus!” Often times, the hustle and bustle of everyday life prevent us from becoming more sustainable and less wasteful; many feel as if they do not have the time to bat an eye towards worrying about their environmental impact. As people grow busier and busier, it becomes hard to keep track of anything but yourself. However, with the power of technology and the convenience of mobile apps, we can encourage those who are hesitant to become environmentally responsible.

What It Does

Our app shows people who are intimidated by gardening that self-sustainability is much easier than most expect. When people accomplish a big goal through small steps, such as sprouting your first tomato plant, they tend to pursue the activity further. We want this app to help people avoid getting discouraged and hesitant about growing plants, and instead give them a push to give back to the Earth and become more sustainable. By allowing users to track what plants they have, the data associated with each crop, as well as lookup information for most common plants, gardening becomes easier than ever. The app abstracts all the “difficult” details of gardening and places everything in one convenient location on the user’s phone, so if people have any trouble or questions regarding growing a plant, they are able to refer to their phone in an instant.

Challenges

None of us know mobile app development, and two members were preoccupied with the Global Game Jam. Nevertheless, we all took part during the ideating process and decided to use software available to us to get our point across as clearly as possible. While learning iPhone or Android app development would have been near impossible to do within a day, Figma allowed us to design a prototype that lets us bring our idea to life.

Accomplishments We’re Proud Of

The minimalistic aesthetics match with ease of use, which is what we were striving for. We want this app to be available to people of all demographics, so by ensuring our app is usable by anybody to get started gardening is a great accomplishment we had this weekend.

What We Learned

We learned a lot about plants! We also did some research into API use, as well as frame-working a mobile app. Because programming it from scratch would have been impossible in a weekend, we became extremely familiar with Figma and designing an app with user experience in mind.

What’s Next for Go Greens, GoReens!

If we do decide to bring this prototype into reality, we wish to publish it on both the App Store and Google Play Store. When there are enough people using the app, a “community” feature may come in handy, where users are able to post their questions or discussions, and others can reply in threads. Additionally, we want to coordinate with Instagram and have a live feed containing pictures of user-grown crops, to inspire others. Ultimately, we want to reduce the reliance on stores and online shipping services by holding people’s hands as they begin to grow their own food.