FloristHeaven

FloristHeaven · PRODUCT DESIGN · END-TO-END CASE STUDY

Properties

role

Product Designer

type

End-to-end app

focus

Research → UX

testing

5-user study

Timeline

3 months

Scope

Research, UX/UI, Usability Testing

A botanical experience designed to empower florists. I designed Florist Heaven’s platform to give florists a powerful storefront and give users an immersive, visually rich botanical ecosystem.

01 — I started with the wrong problem

Florist Heaven began as a marketplace — a better place for florists to showcase their work and for plant enthusiasts to discover and purchase plants. Then I started talking to users. What I found was more interesting.

People did not just need help finding plants. They needed help living with them.

Research showed stronger demand for accessible care guidance (5 in 7 of my sister’s plants died), easier product creation for florists, clearer pricing, and a more personal way to manage the plants users already owned. That changed the project.

• A marketplace for buying plants → A companion for discovering, learning, buying, and caring for them

02 — Understanding the ecosystem

I combined qualitative interviews with florists and plant enthusiasts with quantitative survey data to understand how people discovered, purchased, sold, and cared for plants. Four recurring points of friction surfaced.

• “How do I actually care for this?” — Plant information was difficult to find and often too dense.
• “Why does posting this take so long?” — Florists needed a faster way to publish large numbers of products.
• “Why am I only seeing the extra cost now?” — Pricing and customisation needed to be transparent earlier.
• “This is supposed to be my garden.” — Users wanted ownership and personalisation over their digital plant collection.

03 — The insight that changed the product

The transaction ends. Plant ownership does not. My original mental model was Discover → Buy. Research suggested a much longer relationship:

Discover → Understand → Buy → Care → Learn → Share

The marketplace remained important, but it was no longer the entire product. The new opportunity was to connect commerce with ongoing plant ownership.

04 — Turning research into a product

• Home — Learn from plant-care content and community knowledge.
• Store — Discover and purchase plants and floral creations.
• Create — Publish a product or share knowledge without unnecessary friction.
• Garden — Organise owned plants, collections, and saved guidance.
• Profile — Build identity and credibility — certified florist indicators help users judge professional contributors.

05 — Then I put the prototype in front of people

Persona → journey → value proposition → paper wireframes → digital wireframes → prototype. The goal was not to make the interface look finished — it was to make the ideas testable. I tested with five participants with deliberately varied technical confidence and plant experience. The testing exposed four decisions worth changing.

• 4 of 5 — felt Explore added little beyond search (“So the difference is I can search now?”) — I repositioned the product from store-first to plant companion, making discovery about care knowledge and user-created guides.
• 4 of 5 — did not want to be pulled away from browsing after adding an item — I replaced the forced cart redirect with a bottom-sheet interaction.
• 5 of 5 — reacted negatively to the original Garden — I introduced custom lists, editable imagery, saved guides, and clearer management controls. Less database, more personal space.
• 4 of 5 — wanted answers, not articles (“I just want to see how and when to water my plant”) — I introduced icon-led care sections for watering, light, and other needs.

• Store-first → Companion-first
• Forced cart → Non-disruptive bottom sheet
• Static Garden → Personal ownership
• Dense instructions → Scannable guidance

The biggest iteration was not visual. It was changing what I believed the product should be.

06 — The final ecosystem

Learn, discover, create, grow — the five areas connected into one companion.

07 — Designing beyond one viewport

The final stage pushed the system beyond mobile. I adapted Florist Heaven responsively and explored dark mode on Material Design foundations, using Figma Variables as design tokens. It forced me to think about components as behaviours rather than fixed screens.

08 — Outcomes and what I’d investigate next

With more time I would run longitudinal studies on whether the companion model creates lasting value, how users decide whom to trust (certification vs. community reputation), and whether one ecosystem can serve both experts and beginners.

09 — What this project changed in me

The brief is not the problem. It is a hypothesis about the problem.

Talking to users changed the product. Testing changed the interaction model. Listening to people challenge entire features — not just individual buttons — made the work significantly better. I became less attached to my first solution and more interested in the evidence that might prove it wrong.