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Budburst
The Chicago Botanic Garden needed an app that utilized user generated plant data for a climate change research initiative called Budburst.
The mission of Budburst is to track the cycles of plants in a particular location over time. Users could tag a plant in their local park, or even in their backyard, and enter in plant and location data about that particular plant. By aggregating this data from users all over a given area, the Chicago Botanic Garden could further their research on climate change.
The final deliverable included a refresh of the branding and messaging of Budburst, a marketing site that educated users on the initiative, a mobile app where users could access and contribute to the data, and a version of that app to be used as a web application.
Identity
For typography, I utilized large type treatments to pull out pieces of complex information; enlarging data as forms of visual interest. The iconography was minimal and abstract, since the concepts our icons had to convey were very nuanced. For illustrations, our team created illustrations of the different plant groups as a way to give a field notes sketch feel to the content on the site.
I played with a lot of concentric circles as a way to explore the cyclical, and continuous life of plants over time. In my head I imagined death and rebirth, and the importance of these cycles to the mission of Budburst. In other exploration, I wanted to create an icon that abstracted the image of a plant to convey an organic feeling. Also, I looked for ways to incorporate a location pin symbol into the plant form, since the initiative is so focused on location information.
The chosen option had a mark with a continuous line that resembled a bud and a flower, and the shape of the location pin anchored at the bottom. We kept the typeface all lowercase, since which tied together the concentric circle theme.
Design
In order to simplify the brand story, we reworked the content hierarchy to focus more on the benefits of purchasing an air purifier instead of Blueair as a company. We created purposeful content funnels with high-level features allowing the user to dig deeper into a product. We added benefit-focused headlines which allow for scannable page content.
To help organize the product tiers, we recategorized the Blueair product catalog to be more need focused. Products were originally only grouped by product family which resulted in a lot of time spent researching the differences between families. We implemented new ways to categorize the products based on the users’ room size, price and need. We built this categorization into the navigation so users can always stay on track.
We simplified the look of the product listing page so that the product images could visually sit on the same axis as the user scrolled down the page. One of the big visual differences between the products was their height. The old Blueair site had them all scaled to fit in the same container, so it was hard to see this visual difference as a user.
We simplified the look of the product listing page so that the product images could visually sit on the same axis as the user scrolled down the page. One of the big visual differences between the products was their height. The old Blueair site had them all scaled to fit in the same container, so it was hard to see this visual difference as a user.
In order to make the Blueair checkout process more intuitive, we had to help users better understand the products they were purchasing. Blueair has many different types of purchasing within the site; a user can buy an air purifier, a filter or a filter subscription. This left users unsure of what they were paying for now, what they were paying to have shipped later, and which charges might be reoccurring. This caused problems in two areas of the site: the checkout flow and the cart.