🌱About the Project — ReGrow

What Inspired Us

ReGrow began with a simple everyday observation:
city dwellers often buy herbs and vegetables that spoil within days,
while recyclable containers and kitchen scraps pile up at home — unused and forgotten.

This cycle of buy → waste → rebuy felt deeply unsustainable.
We were inspired by the idea of “re-ownership” —
what if sustainability wasn’t about buying green, but about growing green?

Our goal became clear:

Help people reuse what they already have and regrow what they need —
making sustainable living simple, accessible, and self-sufficient.

What We Learned

Throughout the process, we discovered that sustainability design isn’t just about metrics or data,
but about making eco-friendly actions feel achievable.

To drive long-term behavior change, we learned that the experience must be:

Guided — providing clear, step-by-step instructions.
Rewarding — showing visible progress and impact.
Cyclic — encouraging reuse and continuous growth.

We also explored how AI can act as a bridge between ecological knowledge and daily habits,
turning abstract sustainability goals into tangible micro-actions.

How We Built It

We followed a human-centered design and prototyping process, combining design, AI, and web technologies.

Research & Onboarding Design
- Conducted user interviews with urban residents and beginner gardeners.
- Identified barriers: lack of knowledge, limited space, and low confidence.
- Created an onboarding flow to personalize recommendations based on light, space, and lifestyle.
System & UX Architecture
- Sitemap: Onboarding → Home → Library → Community → Profile.
- Integrated an AI Gardening Assistant as the core experience.
- Designed flows for hydroponic and soil-based setups.
UI & Development
- Designed in Figma, focusing on calm, nature-inspired colors.
- Built front-end in HTML, CSS, JavaScript with Node.js + Express for logic.
- Created a sustainability dashboard tracking
- Used ManusAI API to simulate natural language conversation for the gardening assistant.

Challenges We Faced

Balancing Simplicity and Intelligence
We wanted the AI assistant to feel helpful and friendly — not technical or overwhelming.
Finding that tone required multiple dialogue flow iterations.
Visualizing Growth Digitally
Representing physical plant progress in a satisfying digital format was hard.
We explored progress bars, photo timelines, and an idea for a digital garden view.
Making Sustainability Feel Light
Many eco apps rely on guilt or heavy data.
Our challenge was to make sustainability feel rewarding, not punishing.
Time & Scope Constraints
We focused on must-have features (AI guide, tutorial, personalization)
while deferring complex ones like AR waste recognition and real-time plant diagnostics.

ReGrow transforms sustainability from a concept into a habit —
empowering users to reuse, regrow, and reconnect with the act of everyday growth. Figma Design File https://www.figma.com/design/8zBmUy5HmLVl2gfqhN4si5/UXC-hakathon?node-id=0-1&t=2fq4LoLTKEyADdlb-1