Esha Nalla Portfolio

Both beginner and experienced plant owners struggle to keep their plants healthy because reliable care advice is often scattered, overwhelming, or difficult to apply. Our goal was to design an AI-powered plant care assistant that delivers simple, personalized guidance through intuitive voice and visual interactions.

Problem

Accessible plant care was either too complicated or too expensive.

Existing solutions left plant owners stuck between two extremes: dense, technical guidance that assumed prior knowledge, or premium tools and services priced out of reach. Neither option gave everyday plant owners the simple, affordable support they needed.

“(The) Most difficult thing is to keep track of what each plant needs and their different ways of care.”

Solution

Room Scan

Florish can scan your space to get a better understanding of where to place your plant. Utilizing your phone’s sensors, it can detect the directions your windows face to see how much sunlight the room recieves.

Adding Plants

The camera can scan the plant and identify exactly what plant the user has. It also registers visual indicators regarding the plant’s health to help get a more accurate read of the plant’s condition.

AI Assistance

The AI search allows the user to consult the assistant about any concerns they have. With the knowledge Florish has about your plants, it can provide holistic answers to guide your care.

Emergency Guide

In emergency situations, Florish will notify you that your plant is in danger. By scanning your plant and taking in sensor readings, Florish will give you a diagnosis and steps to recovery. Still not confident about the process? Florish can talk you through every step.

Research

Research revealed three critical moments in plant care: bringing a plant home, monitoring its health, and responding to emergencies.

To better understand the challenges of plant care, we conducted autoethnographic research as beginner plant owners, interviewed three participants with varying levels of experience and lifestyles, and analyzed existing plant care apps. Our research revealed that users’ needs consistently centered around three key moments: bringing home a new plant, monitoring its health over time, and responding to emergencies. These insights became the foundation of our design.

Our Autoethnographies
Our Participants

Our Autoethnographies
Our Participants

Our Autoethnographies
Our Participants

We explored 10 ideas each, then prioritized three features based on user value, feasibility, and impact.

Rather than settling on the first concept, each team member independently brainstormed ten potential features. We evaluated these ideas based on user value, feasibility, and how well they addressed our three core moments. This process helped us narrow our focus to three features that would have the greatest impact.

Insight

We designed three features to help users confidently place, monitor, and care for their plants.

Our final concept brought together three complementary features designed around the key challenges we uncovered in our research:

Room Scan — helps users find the ideal placement for a new plant based on its environmental needs.

Status Badges — provide quick, at-a-glance feedback on a plant’s health and care needs.

Amputation Guide — gives users step-by-step guidance for pruning damaged or dying foliage.

Together, these features create a simple, supportive experience that helps users confidently place, monitor, and care for their plants throughout their journey.

Our final concept brought together three complementary features designed around the key challenges we uncovered in our research:

Room Scan — helps users find the ideal placement for a new plant based on its environmental needs.

Status Badges — provide quick, at-a-glance feedback on a plant’s health and care needs.

Amputation Guide — gives users step-by-step guidance for pruning damaged or dying foliage.

Together, these features create a simple, supportive experience that helps users confidently place, monitor, and care for their plants throughout their journey.

Exploring AR revealed feasibility and usability challenges, leading us to rethink how Florish could make plant care more accessible.

We initially envisioned Florish as an augmented reality experience, using AR glasses to create immersive interactions with plants. Through storyboarding and wireframing, however, we realized that many of our ideas relied on technology that wasn’t yet practical or widely accessible. We also found it difficult to design intuitive AR interactions that users could easily understand.

We pivoted from AR to mobile to create a more feasible, accessible, and intuitive plant-care experience.

Recognizing these limitations, we shifted Florish to a mobile experience. This pivot allowed us to preserve the immersive, supportive experience we envisioned while creating a solution that was more technically feasible, accessible, and intuitive for users.

Iterations

We explored AI assistance in VR + AR to make interactions more intuitive and easy to use.

Our research revealed opportunities to make AI feel more intuitive and context-aware. We ultimately explored integrating AI assistance into VR and AR experiences, creating tools that could support users in the moment without taking control away from them.

We created a lightweight visual system that keeps plant care clear, intuitive, and easy to navigate. However, our first iterations felt dull.

With a clear direction established, we designed user flows and a visual system centered on clarity and ease of use. Inspired by natural tones and organic forms, the interface was intentionally lightweight and intuitive, allowing users to focus on caring for their plants rather than learning how to navigate the app. While we liked the layout, the overall colorpallete and aesthetic wasnt resonating.

Final Product

We refined the interactions and visual system to create a more engaging, cohesive, and polished experience.

As the design evolved, we refined interactions, streamlined the user flow, and updated our color palette with a more vibrant green that better captured the energy and growth of healthy plants. These iterations made the experience feel more engaging, cohesive, and polished while strengthening the connection between the visual design and the purpose of the product.

Reflection

This project challenged me to balance ambitious ideas with practical design decisions. Exploring voice interfaces and augmented reality expanded my understanding of emerging technologies, while our pivot to mobile reinforced that successful design isn’t about using the newest technology—it’s about choosing the solution that best serves users. It also strengthened my skills in storyboarding, interaction design, and collaborative decision-making.

Check out my other projects!