Blossom SmartPlant Potter
by Kim Tran & Cicily Chatterjee
Raise your hand if you bought 1,2, or even several plants during the COVID-19 lockdown ✋🏼. Now raise your hand again if a majority of them died 😬
Many people have at least one plant in their house or outside in their garden. Not everyone is lucky to have a green thumb when it comes to gardening and taking care of plants or flowers. The reasons plants don’t live as long as they are expected to are because of lack of sun, too much sun, too much or not enough water, incorrect soil and fertilization, and most common of all, using the wrong pot size. Many times people leave the plant/flowers in the pot they bought it from when purchasing them from a nursery or even Home Depot.
Plants or flowers should not be kept in the pot you purchase them from because all the soil and roots are combined and twined and it does not allow the plant to absorb the correct nutrients from the water and the soil. So in order to avoid all the listed common reasons for a plant not to live to their expectancy is to own a smart pot.
Our smart pot was adopted from and to be incorporated with the app Blossom. Blossom identifies your plant giving you all the information about the plant, how much sun and water it needs, a schedule for you to keep track of the last time you watered the plant, and so on.
The additional add-on we provide to Blossom is that the SmartPlant Potter can automatically detect the information Blossom does. But instead of taking a picture of each plant, and in case your plant is not identified through the app, it can be detected through the Blossom SmartPlant Potter. The smart potter will be able to provide you with notifications and allow you to remotely take care of your plant as well. This will provide users relief if they are unable to tend to their plants constantly and give them a more positive outlook on becoming a green thumb owner to their plants.
The Blossom SmartPlant Potter will look like many generic and minimal light brown pots that are commonly used to put your flower and plants in. Inside the pot, there are sensors to detect the plant’s or flower’s soil fertility, water intake, and sun exposure. The pot uses Bluetooth technology to sync to the complimentary Blossom app for both iOS and Android devices.
Let’s look at the design to connect the Blossom SmartPlant Potter with the application.
Figure 1 shows the home screen of My Garden in the Blossom application. You recently bought a Dracaena Trifasciata and placed it in the smart pot.
Now that the Dracaena Trifasciat is in the Blossom SmartPlant Potter, the Blossom App will start searching for it nearby. Figure 2 shows the application searching for the pot to connect with it.
Complete! The App recognizes the pot with the Dracaena Trifasciata inside
If you want to extend your plant family and bought another Blossom SmartPlant Potter, then follow the same process to add your plant/flower to your garden as shown in Figure 4. Once the application identifies all of the Blossom SmartPlant Potters with the plant/flower inside, you can prevent their demise and keep them for as long as ever.
Because Blossom SmartPlant Potter can sense your plant/flower, it’ll send you notifications to inform you what your plant/flower needs. For example, Figure 5 illustrates how your plant, Darcy, needs sunlight to produce more nutrients.
Reviews
While it’s easy to buy plants (and stare at them fondly from your couch), it can be tough to take care of them properly. If you’re unsure of how to keep your plants alive and tried a number of tips to revive them but failed. Then maybe the Blossom SmartPlant Potter could be for you.
Skip the Tips & Tricks articles on how to take care of or revive your plant. The SmartPlant Potter will tell you exactly what your plant needs from just a push of a notification. Because Blossom can provide all kinds of features, details, and plant care recommendations, it is the best and the only app to use with the potter.
If you have used every app possible and followed every basic rule there is on how to take care of a plant after it has started to diminish, look no further. Our smart pot is proven to bring back your plants within a few weeks. The purpose of the smart pot is to start the proper care the moment you purchase a plant. This allows you to get the right soil, know much to water the plant, and all other types of care it will need. We also recommend using the smart pot for already existing plants you have whether they are diminishing or not to prevent that cycle from happening.
Our longest customer Kelly is known for having a green thumb; however, during COVID it has become hard for her to remember when to water her plants and with the extra plants she has gotten over a short amount of time, her new and old plants are starting to wilt. Kelly tried our smart pot for new and old plants, and within a few weeks, they slowly came back to life and are now in perfect condition.
So if you have a plant that you’ve had for years, but all of a sudden it has started to wilt, use our smart pot. If you want to start getting into plant care and gardening, consider smart pot for all your future plants.
If you would like to see the entire prototype, please click on the link below: https://www.figma.com/proto/C1qA98WaoKU598rfEl9vFU/Blossom?node-id=0%3A1&scaling=scale-down&page-id=0%3A1
