The Team

My Role: Senior Product Designer

Responsibilities:

• Defining the collaboration process

• Creating consistent and on-brand visual language for all cross-platform products

• Managing second designer’s work

• Designing frictionless delightful and accessible iOS experience and overseeing web design

• Communicating and presenting progress on product design across all streams of work

• Taking part in ideation and strategy for service and feature additions/ improvements

• 1 PM
• 2 Product Designers
• 1 UX Designer
• 3 iOS Engineers

In 2016 Scotts (over 90% of lawn-care products market) asked Prolific Interactive to work with them on a new iOS and Android experience with functionality, interaction and visual design that would address pain points in the current app.

The opportunity

Lawn care is perceived as confusing and complex. The app was meant to ease that by delivering consumers with simple, personalized steps on what, when and wow to use Scotts products to get the lawn they desire.

The previous My Lawn app, launched in 2015, was a success. By June of 2015 the app achieved $2.4 million in associated revenue from product applications and users had created 150,000 lawn care plans. However, the Scotts team identified specific areas of improvement that would help take the app to the next level:

• The web wrapped app was very laggy.

• The app was loaded with helpful features, but as a complete experience it lacked focus and confused many users.

• Creating a Lawn Care Plan and going through onboarding was almost 20 screens.

• User base was heavily skewed towards 50+ age and it was crucial to engage 20-40 y.o. audience.

The plan was to design an iOS and Android app virtually simultaneously.

Primary KPIs

• 550k new downloads

• 450k LCPs created

• 50k Products ‘Applied’

• Push Notifications 80% opt in rate (iOS)

• 70% email opt in

The process

We started by immersing ourselves in the user experience of buying Scotts products at Home Depot. We also conducted multiple interviews with stakeholders and users to learn about business and user perspective and needs. One of main goals was talking to young people and understand their approach and expectations.

Once we got a good lay of the land, we proposed a new, more focused feature set removing features users didn’t engage with. I started defining a visual language that would engage younger people. We started building the app, feature after feature, simplifying them, meticulously testing each step to make sure solution was intuitive and efficient.

We were updating Scotts daily during standups and once a week during a product update. We worked closely with Scotts’s scientists and specialists to create accurate product and tasks recommendations that take into account big differences between regions (from the lawn care perspective USA divided into 6 regions).

The app was tracking over 500 unique data points on each user. We are able to understand the user, make product decisions, and gain insights into how users were engaging with the Scotts Brand. Additionally, we gained insight into why users don’t use lawn care products and got direct feedback via email prompts through the app.

Highlights

1. One of the best moments of the project was when, after three days of sketching, brainstorming and discussing I came up with a new way to modernize one of the steps in the Lawn Care Plan creation flow. The old app was using series of images to ask the user about their current lawn condition. Images were small, not relevant to lots of users (showing wrong grass-types). I came up with more natural experience, making this step much easier and intuitive.

2. Another improvement I made was color-coding product cards, so they would be intuitive at a glance. Scotts had 21 different categories of products, each differentiated by a recognizable color. I used this system to my advantage to make the UI more effective — creating a visual language that was appealing to a younger crowd’s expectations, while simultaneously being accessible to old school users!

The outcome

The new design has seen unbelievable results. Compared to 2015 Scott’s has seen an increase in Lawn Care Plans, products applied, associated revenue, users, a more efficient experience, and stellar reviews. It also gave Scotts’ digital marketing team new ways to to engage with customers.

Compared to the same time last year:

• 40% more unique users launched the updated App

• 93% users completed LCP creation plan (32% in the old app)

• Over $2M more in associated app revenue

• 74% of users Opt in to push notifications

• 74% of new users opt into the Scotts Mailing list

• 70% increase in average rating in the app store