Personal Project: Seek Redesign

IN PROGRESS: A speculative redesign of one of my favorite wildlife & plant identification tools, Seek by iNaturalist

Role: Individual Project

Timeline: Ongoing (so far, 1 week during the evenings)

Goal: Focus on playing with UI and motion design— lighter on UX research

Background

During the beginning of the pandemic, my roommates and I took many walks together in the nearby arboretum and natural areas. We became really invested in identifying spring ephemerals, the first wildflowers of spring, during quarantine. It was amazing to see how the plants around us changed so dramatically as spring turned into summer, which turned into fall. I had never been so tuned into the natural world around us!

Seek, an application by iNaturalist, was a huge part of how we learned more about all the plants that we saw during our walks. It uses image recognition technology to identify plants, fungi, and wildlife, which was a huge help for us.

I started working on this redesign because I wanted to break out of my normal professional work, and showcase some fun UI and visual design exploration. (This project is light on user research because of this focus. It’s meant to be more of a speculative design!) I thought there would be a lot of room here to experiment and try new things, and I am also interested in creating tools that help people engage with the natural world, so it seemed like a perfect fit!

What Seek looks like currently (Courtesy of iNaturalist)

Problem

Target Users: Amateur naturalists who are motivated to learn more about species identification (aka, my roommates and I)

After informally interviewing several users, there were a few common gaps I noticed that could enhance the user experience—specifically around identifying and searching for species in the user’s area.

Gap: If Seek cannot identify the species, it’s a dead end for the user.

How might Seek use the information it has to create a more engaging experience?

“It’s really unsatisfying when Seek says it’s close to identifying species but isn’t able to. I wish there was some sort of resolution, like the three best guesses or members of the same family/genus in the area.”

Gap: There is no way to proactively learn about local species beyond the limited view on the homepage.

How might we allow users to engage with Seek even when they aren’t actively observing wildlife/plants/fungi?

“I was trying really hard to find the Dutchman’s Breeches and didn’t have any luck for the longest time. I eventually found them in the woods nearby, but I wish it was easier to see where they have been identified in the past so I could search in a more targeted way.”


Goals

  1. Explore new UI and visual design ideas through a redesign of Seek

  2. Create a more engaging experience for users when Seek cannot identify a species

  3. Allow users to use Seek to explore different species in their area.

 Workflow Mapping & Wireframing

The workflow diagram was useful in mapping out all the different possible workflows and basic user actions I wanted to consider in the design.

Wireframing helped me to understand how the elements would sit in relation to each other through the workflow without investing in creating UI. I also used greyscale to map out what elements should get more emphasis on the screen.

 Mockups

How might we allow users to engage with Seek even when they aren’t actively observing wildlife/plants/fungi?

Reflection

This personal project is actively in progress. I am planning to finish fleshing out the workflow for users when Seek cannot identify a species. I also want to explore a way for the user to quickly reference species they want to see in the future.

I also will create a style guide and do usability testing. I hope to get some useful feedback on the design that will allow me to do some iteration on the current design.