I started to add some flowers to the plant planner app to get some reminders for September sowings to see if it something that is worth using.
I can definitely see its potential, but can also see its not your core business and might well become a paid/subscriber item to make it worth developing further.
I'm happy to help, adding new flower/veg varieties, testing and suggesting new features if you are looking to move this forward.
I would also like to know where it stands in your long list of priorities and get assurances that I could export all my historical plant data if I do start investing my time with it.
On a separate not I have seen an increasing number of of server errors ( 404 & 500 I think ) when using the app recently. Hopefully this is something you guys are aware of.
Yes we are planning to improve the plant side of the app, and it will overlap with a new indoor hydroponics product we'll be launching in the next couple of months. I'll be sure to get in touch with any previews for your feedback.
What would you like to see added as features?
What would you like to see improved from a UX perspective?
Perfect. I'll compile a list later for you. I had a look at developing an android app a few years ago, but am not up enough with the tech anymore and frankly enjoy growing stuff instead. Shall I post here, or send an email? It might be quite lengthy!
So a tiny snapshot of some of the rubbish in my head…
1. Category becomes something along the lines of 1. Fruit 2. Vegetable 3. Flowers 4. Herbs 5. Other…
This gives you greater flexibility than you have at the moment and will breakdown some of the extremely long lists you are going to have.
2. Your current category lists would then be next showing things like Arthichoke, Asparagus etc or Achilliea or Basil etc depending upon the previous selecton.
1. Then you get into your 'varieties' e.g. Globe or 'Cerise Pink', or Classico etc. The water gets a bit muddy here in terms of the classification between vegetables and flowers caused by lots of cultivation/hybridization. They don’t all seem to map cleanly to Genus-Variety-Species etc. Database modelling likes definites. I'm sure someone out there can provide a better steer on it than me.
3. Description
4. An image of said variety.
5. A further category ( or 2 ) for lifecycle/hardiness - hardy/half-hardy/tender, annuals/perennials/biennials etc
6. A further category ( or 2 ) for height/spread - switching between metric/imperial
7. Spacing - switching between metric/imperial
8. Sowing times - week/month from/to. Often multiple times in the year e.g. spring/autumn. Email reminders.
Essentially you would be building up someone's planting plan for the year into a lovely calendar/spreadsheet/visual guide etc.
Eventually I would want to be dragging and dropping plants onto a visual interpretation of my plot/polytunnel. The app would then say yes/no, too much sun, too close to beans etc… .. buy a grubber & an extra 4 foot of 4mm pipe from Harvst.
There is so much you could offer here, but other than recouping some money by suggesting/selling relevant irrigation parts for particular plants, linking through to seed suppliers or a subscription model I would struggle to see how you would recover your costs.
Money is tight at the moment, so subscription is a no from me, even though I love your products.
I do recommend you whenever I can though.
I also wonder if you need to get away from the cost of centralized hosting, server maintenance. You maybe keep some core hosting - boxes connecting for updates, maintenance etc and push the rest of the functionality out to locally hosted IOS and Android apps.
If people want a centralized version, management services, multisite or backups they subscribe.
So I think I have sufficiently overstepped my brief.
I have loads more I could add, but I don't think anyone needs that.
Hope some of that is useful. What are your thoughts?
Damien
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I started to add some flowers to the plant planner app to get some reminders for September sowings to see if it something that is worth using.
I can definitely see its potential, but can also see its not your core business and might well become a paid/subscriber item to make it worth developing further.
I'm happy to help, adding new flower/veg varieties, testing and suggesting new features if you are looking to move this forward.
I would also like to know where it stands in your long list of priorities and get assurances that I could export all my historical plant data if I do start investing my time with it.
On a separate not I have seen an increasing number of of server errors ( 404 & 500 I think ) when using the app recently. Hopefully this is something you guys are aware of.
Look forward to hearing back from you
Damien
Yes we are planning to improve the plant side of the app, and it will overlap with a new indoor hydroponics product we'll be launching in the next couple of months. I'll be sure to get in touch with any previews for your feedback.
What would you like to see added as features?
What would you like to see improved from a UX perspective?
Chris
So a tiny snapshot of some of the rubbish in my head…
1. Category becomes something along the lines of 1. Fruit 2. Vegetable 3. Flowers 4. Herbs 5. Other…
This gives you greater flexibility than you have at the moment and will breakdown some of the extremely long lists you are going to have.
2. Your current category lists would then be next showing things like Arthichoke, Asparagus etc or Achilliea or Basil etc depending upon the previous selecton.
1. Then you get into your 'varieties' e.g. Globe or 'Cerise Pink', or Classico etc. The water gets a bit muddy here in terms of the classification between vegetables and flowers caused by lots of cultivation/hybridization. They don’t all seem to map cleanly to Genus-Variety-Species etc. Database modelling likes definites. I'm sure someone out there can provide a better steer on it than me.
3. Description
4. An image of said variety.
5. A further category ( or 2 ) for lifecycle/hardiness - hardy/half-hardy/tender, annuals/perennials/biennials etc
6. A further category ( or 2 ) for height/spread - switching between metric/imperial
7. Spacing - switching between metric/imperial
8. Sowing times - week/month from/to. Often multiple times in the year e.g. spring/autumn. Email reminders.
9. Germination temp - from/to ( degrees & Fahrenheit )
10. Sun - shade
Aspect, wind, moisture, soil…
Essentially you would be building up someone's planting plan for the year into a lovely calendar/spreadsheet/visual guide etc.
Eventually I would want to be dragging and dropping plants onto a visual interpretation of my plot/polytunnel. The app would then say yes/no, too much sun, too close to beans etc… .. buy a grubber & an extra 4 foot of 4mm pipe from Harvst.
There is so much you could offer here, but other than recouping some money by suggesting/selling relevant irrigation parts for particular plants, linking through to seed suppliers or a subscription model I would struggle to see how you would recover your costs.
Money is tight at the moment, so subscription is a no from me, even though I love your products.
I do recommend you whenever I can though.
I also wonder if you need to get away from the cost of centralized hosting, server maintenance. You maybe keep some core hosting - boxes connecting for updates, maintenance etc and push the rest of the functionality out to locally hosted IOS and Android apps.
If people want a centralized version, management services, multisite or backups they subscribe.
So I think I have sufficiently overstepped my brief.
I have loads more I could add, but I don't think anyone needs that.
Hope some of that is useful. What are your thoughts?
Damien