Miracle Gro “Growables” Pods
How can you empower people to succeed at edible gardening, regardless of experience?
ALIGNMENT PHASE 1 - IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM, scope & scale
The overarching challenge: Declining sales
The project began when our brand managers approached us with a challenge based on sales data that showed numbers had declined in a specific category of the business: Gardens. We set out to determine why? and what we could do to restore sales?
Beginning with market research, we looked at emerging trends and explored the competitive landscape to see how it compared to our product offerings.
Key Insights:
Big box retailers like Lowes and Home Depot were expanding to reach urban areas.
Smaller scale DIY gardens were gaining in popularity.
The rise in “Farm to table” restaurants was inspiring edible gardening.
Methods used
for designing the experience:
Segmentation
Competitive Audits
Trend Assessment
Product Roadmaps
Organizational Strategy
Innovation Workshops
Market Research
Consumer Personas
Market Research
Brainstorming
Evaluation $ SURVEY
Brand Strategy
Methods used
for defining the strategy:
Brand Identity
Naming Systems
Structural Packaging
Brand Communications
Interactive & Web
Retail Experience
Service Design
User Interface Design
Human Factors
Engineering
Prototyping
Industrial Design
ALIGNMENT PHASE 1 - COLLABORATION
What do we think we know?
With these insights in mind, we began with a 2-day in-house strategy session in which we gathered all stakeholders to do a team “brain dump.” Our motivation was three-fold:
1) To ensure stakeholders had an opportunity to participate.
2) To draw upon our in-house experts and take into consideration all the existing assumptions we had about customer expectations.
3) To get any and all preconceived notions we had about what would appeal to them on paper. To that end, post-its were generated to capture opinions, mental models and perceived needs to inform the next steps in our project.
We captured all the post-its and organized them under the following headers:
“Ideas”
“Needs/Issues”
“Journey map”
“Other”
That gave me a solid starting point from which to plan our research and test our assumptions.
Key Platforms
As a team we identified 4 main approaches to gardening that we used as a framework for further study, across flowers, vegetables and herbs:
In-ground (BEDS/rows)
Broadcast Spreaders
Transplants FROM SEED
Modular Systems (RAISED)
Key trend: Urban gardens
“Rooftop Farms” started by Chris and Lisa Goode in Greenpoint Brooklyn. The 6,000-square-foot roof has a diversity of crops. (New York Magazine)
1. Cabbage and Kale
2. Peas and Lettuces
3. Peppers
4. Mixed Greens
5. Composting Soil
DISCOVERY PHASE 2 - TEST OUR THEORIES
We then conducted a consumer survey via email and confirmed three key emerging opportunities in the DIY category that we agreed could potentially inspire incremental growth. The biggest take-away was that DIY edible gardening was a very strong theme:
Both urban and suburban consumers were drawn to “farm to table” offerings
“Seed to sprout” gardening was perceived as too difficult and too slow
Regionally specific offerings were valued (native & seasonal plantings)
Understanding planting behavior
It was now time for site-visits to private gardens to observe what people actually did while gardening at home. My main goal was to figure out where they were struggling.
I identified 8 gardeners and made in-person appointments to interview them, observe their approach to planting, and listen to them share their pain points. These interviews also helped inform the definition of our personas.
Scotts Miracle Gro provided supplies in exchange for the participant’s time and insight.
Personas for quick reference:
ANALYSIS PHASE 3 - REVISIT & CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS
Discovery Groups
I then participated in and facilitated 4 Discovery Groups with another designer in attendance, to capture variances significant to planting schedules in the south, midwest, and on the east and west coasts.
Each of these groups lasted 2 hours to address the following objectives:
Probe behaviors and attitudes toward gardening
Understand likes and dislikes of Miracle Gro products
Identify perceptions both +/- about our brand vs. the competition
Identify meaningful ways to express features/benefits
Identify any unmet needs
Participants were chosen from local garden clubs to represent a range of skill. This was followed by a post-group debrief with the core team at corporate headquarters in Ohio.
Why do people fail with seeds?
DEPTH CONTROL
There’s a lot that goes into ensuring a seedling will make it to maturity: The seed can’t dry out, it needs nutrients, it needs room to grow, the soil plays a big part and it does matter how far the seedling has to travel to reach sunlight.
ANALYSIS PHASE 3 - IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM
During Analysis, we made sense of the different needs, motivations and approaches we uncovered during Discovery as a team. I then created a journey-map of gardening to take a closer look at how people actually planted vs. how they should be planting. This uncovered 2 key insights: 1) People were adverse to and scared of growing from seed. 2) Most gardener’s don’t recognize that depth and spacing make all the difference in their success.
As discussions continued, the concept of an “EZ Garden” began to take shape. We reached consensus that this concept was uniquely positioned within the Scotts Miracle-Gro assortment to capitalize on emerging market conditions and provide a superior consumer option.
It was also a realistic goal from the point of view of regulatory approvals, production timelines and scope. It was now time for another brainstorming session to begin sketching ideas across our key platforms from the Alignment phase so we could decide where we had the most to gain.
ENVISIONING & EVALUATION PHASE 4 - FINDING THE BIG IDEA
The Ratings exercise:
Each participant was given one sheet of stickers, (14 Stickers total) for use in scoring the ideas generated during the session.
Participants were instructed to use only one sticker per concept.
A value was attached to each level as well as specific quantities as shown.
This enabled us to narrow down which platform to focus on and subsequently which final concept.
The winning concept: ensures the precise depth
Fool-proof seed pods
We explored a myriad of ideas across all four approaches to gardening (in-ground, broadcast, transplant, modular) and continued to sharpen our focus. Our goal was to identify the truly innovative solutions and reach consensus on which new product idea would stand apart and then finally select the top concept.
At this point I also began making note of key benefits and features we wanted to incorporate. Concurrently I partnered with our scientists in R&D to determine the perfect balance of materials needed to ensure a successful outcome.
Together, we then went through rounds of discussions and refinements before moving forward with our final recommendations to product development: a fail-proof seed pod.
Directions on the back of the label indicate correct spacing and days to maturity.
DEPLOYMENT PHASE 5 - STRATEGY INTERNALIZED
Quality Control
During the deployment phase we took the opportunity to level-set, realign on common goals and ensure that we had not overlooked any expectations from the Brand Managers and their teams. Regulatory considerations were discussed as well as anything related to material specifications that we might need to think about. We then revisited timelines and milestones, and came to agreement on final deliverables.
This was also the moment in the project lifecycle that any concerns from across the business teams were reviewed and resolved.
We were now poised to finalize the physical product and packaging and prepare to launch a new product line. The seed pod itself would provide a biodegradable encapsulated environment designed to guarantee worry-free successful growth from seed. Simply peel back the label, exposing the coir, seed and fertilizer inside. Push it level with the soil and add water.
First round launch: Seed choices included vegetables and herbs followed by a second round launch of a variety of flower choices native to their markets.
DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT PHASE 6
Results: Miracle Gro “Growables”™ Pods
I handed off my brief to the R&D division in partnership with the manufacturing and packaging design teams for reference. They in turn explored not only how the product would be delivered, but also what the in-store launch footprint would look like at point-of-purchase.
A naming exercise was completed, followed by final approvals on label content, brand identity and packaging design.
When ready, final prototypes were sent to the participants from our on-site interview phase. I then captured any feedback via email survey on ease-of-use and followed-up with phone calls to thank them for their time. Finally I provided a summary report of their feedback to our team members in R&D, brand and production.