Teapot Gardens Mobile App
INFO
Worked with a group of 4 designers and 12 developers to bring Teapot Gardens, a mobile app designed to cultivate more green spaces within urban landscapes, to life. Teapot Gardens gives users the chance to explore their love for plants and their community.
DISCIPLINE
UX Design
UI Design
Illustration
TIMELINE
6 Months
ROLE
UI UX Designer
Illustrator
2025 little update from me :-)
I'm now happily under contract with Teapot Garden to continue strengthening their visual identity across their social media and website.
Brief
Teapot Garden is a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, seeking to curate more green spaces within urban communities through social garden-based events. They needed an app that would entice more event attendees, keep them engaged, and ultimately encourage more volunteers
BRAND IDENTITY
[ 1 ]
The visual system should connect users easily to Teapot Garden events—an interaction that ultimately reflects the deep relationship between humans and nature
FUNNEL DESIGN
[ 2 ]
To support Teapot Garden's nature-based misson, we identified new information architectures, defined compelling user experiences, updated art direction, and created complementary visual design systems to reflect what the organization stands for.
RETENTION = GAMIFICATION
Given the relatively simple function of a registration app, we wanted to imbue as much personality as we could in every turn. For me, this meant developing a Pokémon pet-like feature that would appeal to a broader audience, while staying true to Teapot Garden's mission to inspire and motivate more event goers.
Research
To start our process, we spent tireless hours comparing similar event-going apps, retention apps, and gamified and game platforms to uncover the secret to building a strong retention app.
We completed Opportunity Mapping, Affinity Mapping, and Competitive Analysis.
Competitive Analysis
Solutions
FEATURE [1]
A Warm Welcome to the Garden
We transformed onboarding from a tedious step into a story-driven welcome, immersing users in the Teapot Garden with unique animations and illustrations that felt akin to entering the garden itself. This also set us apart from other registration apps.
FEATURE [2]
Engaging Exploration
Inspired by our research, we focused on making program exploration simple yet exciting. With custom illustrations and a card-swiping UX reminiscent of Pokémon playing cards, Teapotters can easily browse and find their next favorite event.
FEATURE [3]
Instilling a Sense of Security
Our research showed that fear is a major barrier to event registration. To address this, our final design lets users see others who have RSVP'd, including new "Teapotters," to build trust and boost sign-ups.
A photo album feature also helps strengthen a sense of belonging and community
Lastly, using funnel design, we focused on our client’s main priority; Encouraging attendees to sign up and volunteer.
FEATURE [4]
Encouraging Engagement
through Gamification
Why Gamification in an Event App?
Knowing we needed to build a system that was low effort but high reward to maintain user consistency, we referred back to our competitive analysis and tested several methods of gamification.
Process 1
Inspired by Tamagotchi, we tested care-based plant features, like feeding and watering, to engage users, but feedback showed these were too complex and too unrelated to event attendance
Process 2
We tested offering users a wide plant selection, like kids in a candy shop, but found it caused decision fatigue.
Process 3
As development continued, we shifted to an anticipation-based model that motivates users with the excitement of unlocking new species.
The Pet Plant: Pokemon but for Adults
Our streamlined system lets users earn experience points by attending events, evolving their plant through three stages. When a plant is fully evolved, the next one unlocks automatically, thus eliminating decision fatigue and directly connecting event attendance to plant growth.
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Reflection
Compared to other student projects, this was the first time I designed a product within certain constraints set by the stakeholders and the software engineers. It pushed me to think logistically and cleverly.
All jokes aside, my team trusted me to direct the visual look of this product, from the colors, UX decisons, and illustrations and it was so fruitful seeing it come together and be exactly what our client envisoned!
Figma draw came out while this app was in progress and I got to dip my toes/and fall in love with the feature! I'm excited to use it in future products.
FUNNEL DESIGN
[ 2 ]
To support Teapot Garden's nature-based misson, we identified new information architectures, defined compelling user experiences, updated art direction, and created complementary visual design systems to reflect what the organization stands for.