Summary

Problem

Landscape design professionals face collaboration and communication problems during the proposal process. Scheduling and data issues can create rifts in the client-professional relationship.

Solution

Research and identify specific issues with developing proposals. (These insights are to be addressed in a later prototype for a system that helps with landscape design proposals.)

Outcome

Landscape professionals find design proposals are the trickiest part, requiring lots of info gathering and communication. Innovative tools, such as AR and AI, could assist with proposals and retaining information.

Problem

Professionals' Pain Points
  • Collected information can take many forms and be stored in several places
  • ​Notes about design can be easily missed by others
  • Referencing photos or past work is difficult and tedious
  • Managing versions for multiple clients takes time and lots of storage space
  • Tracking some client conversations and information is impossible

Clients' Pain Points
  • Project timeline is often unknown or unclear
    Proposals are not offered in multiple formats (digital and print)
  • ​Lack of clarity (and visualization) about some of the professional's design ideas
Solution Values
Primary
  • Integrations needed to upload data for quicker design creations (e.g., uploading a plot plan’s measurements)
  • Input for project requirements as well as taking notes about parts of the design
  • Version tracking/history and connecting multiple different designs for the same customer
  • Easy and quick way to show photos of past work and online images

​Secondary
  • Information tracking and retention, e.g. phone calls
  • Timeline about the project's start date, duration, and approximate end date

Process

My Contribution
Researched a competitor's software and reviewed three articles related to technologies within the landscaping and landscape design industry. Developed scripts and protocols for and conducted contextual inquiries with landscape design professionals who had experience with the design proposal process. Created a persona of the landscape design professional as well as a sequence model detailing the design proposal process, which included a supplemental physical model. Collaboratively deduced requirements from the findings and models about the professional and clients.

Competitive Analysis

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Turfhop: All-in-one management solution
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Arborgold: Proposals and billing management solution
​Analyzed key functions/features, UI elements, and UX aspects to gain a better understanding of current solutions and their capabilities and determine what information needed to be obtained during field research.
Insights
  • CRM supported
  • Project and time management supported
  • Marketing initiatives supported
  • Quoting (proposals), billing, and payment supported
  • Many user types and company locations (or divisions) supported
  • Graphical and tabular reports for many avenues of information
  • Real-time updating
  • Several integrations supported
  • Mostly files uploading to associate proposals and clients
  • ​Both web and mobile applications

Literature Review

Technologies supporting landscape design: 
  • LiDAR and point cloud modeling for vegetation
  • Landscape Information Modeling (LIM)
  • 3D renderings and virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) or simulations
Other information (used in field research):
  • Tracking market trends
  • Focusing on client needs
Insights
  • Interactions are needed between visualization models and data
  • Integrations are crucial for a holistic system
  • ​Important to include clients in the briefing or consultation process

Field Research

Contextual Inquiries with Landscape Professionals
Goals
  • ​Learn about the general landscape design process
  • Learn the various steps and methods used in the design proposal process
  • Reveal frustrations with current software and processes to identify areas of opportunity (secondary goal)
  • Identify the lifecycle of a project (secondary goal) 
Conclusions​
  1. The general steps are contacting the company, expressing needs/wants, surveying property or site, clarifying other necessities (measurements, priorities, etc.), and approving and starting the job. 
  2. Client visits often happen in different ways, but these visits have a greeting (beginning), surveying (middle), and closing (end) phase.
  3. Designs are not always designed in full in the software by the main creator of the design.
  4. Managing many versions and lots of client data is difficult and time-consuming.
  5. Designs often require showing clients photos and images quickly to suggest some ideas and spark others. 
  6. Proposal designs are both functional and aesthetic for the client. 
  7. Proposal designs are not created with a strict budget in mind.
In-Person Interviews with Clients
​Goals
  • Learn about clients’ needs and the process for finding a company
  • Discover what clients like/dislike about the proposal they received
  • Learn more about expectations for the project
Conclusions
  1. ​The clients feel that landscape company websites do not provide enough information (e.g., lack of visuals and pictures).
  2. One of the participants expressed frustration with the process of signing up to multiple sites to get a quotation and the process being tedious.
  3. More images and visuals are appreciated on the website as well as proposals. Clients do not have a preference over digital or hard-copy proposals, however, hard-copy proposals tend to get lost.
  4. Clients require clear communication about how long the process will take, and when it will start should be in the proposal.
  5. ​Clients are more likely to choose a company where they have contacts personally or through a mutual contact over going for a new company from a website.

Synthesis

Personas
Landscape Professional (below)
Despite a lack of participants, two demographically different professionals provided similar information regarding design proposals, resulting in a primary user persona identifying several goals, frustrations, and pain points for landscape design professionals. ​
Client (below)
A secondary user persona was developed to support the primary user persona. Josh was a reminder about the goals, frustrations, and pain points for the client, who the main user is serving. 
Work Models
Physical Model (below)
A representation of the general process during a client site visit, color-coded to show where the steps of the sequence model occur.
Sequence Model (below)
​A representation of the steps involved for both the client and professional from client inception to the start of the project.

Solution

Possible Directions
  • Augmented reality (AR) feature to help design on the spot during the site visit (below, left)
  • Notes taken on the site visit anchored to the location in which the note was taken (below, middle)
  • Artificial intelligence (AI) to make suggestions based on the site visit notes (and the ability to show the suggestion in the design proposal) (below, right top and bottom)
  • AI recorded / transcribed site visit notes and follow-up calls from the client (not shown below)

Early Concepts

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AR to modify in real-time during the site visit
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Location-anchored site visit notes
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AI suggestions based on site visit notes
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AI suggestion shown in design proposal

Outcomes

1
​Frustrations were identified, and conceptual features were ideated.
2
​Processes and pain points were documented using the personas and models created.
3
Innovative technologies were considered an important and underutilized asset for landscape design proposals.​

Reflection

​There are a couple other techniques that could have been used to enhance the results.
  • One insight could have been chosen and developed for a more in-depth, focused solution.
  • After developing some initial concepts, evaluation of the concepts would have determined the most valuable solution. 
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