Helping People find blooms around them
What is Blooms?
Blooms is an app I’m designing to help people take a step back from the daily grind to appreciate one of nature’s most beautiful creations which most people just walk past everyday - flowers!
Project Overview
I’ve set some goals for what the app is and what it is not
Currently done ideating and working on the final UI
Will test the concept with people soon!
The Team
Just me... for now! Get in touch if you’re a developer who’s interested in helping me bring this app to life.
Timeline
2 weeks and counting!
When was the last time you really appreciated a piece of nature?
We’re all so caught up in our own humdrum routines, on most days we have no time or headspace to observe and find a piece of nature to put the most anxious bits of our minds at rest.
Today’s humans really crave for connection with nature.
Even more than in research papers, this has been evident in our personal lives through the pandemic, which left us feeling completely disconnected from anything outside our 4 walls.
This has been my personal experience as well, and it’s pushed me to constantly look for even the tiniest pockets of nature around me.
But it’s not a lack of nature that has led to this craving...
It’s just how disconnected we are from our surroundings.
Living in Bengaluru, which has been historically dubbed as the garden city and more recently, has gained attention for having some pretty incredible year-round blooms, I know this:
More often than not, nature is right ‘round the corner, waiting to be found and appreciated. People just need a little help finding it.
Trying to solve for this disconnect led to the idea of Blooms.
Through a decade of maintaining a photography account online dedicated to observing and appreciating every bit of nature, I can confirm that nothing brings people together in a state of elation like flowers. So I decided to work with what already works!
The Idea
A few pointers for what the Blooms app will do:
Discovery
Allow people to discover flowers and flowering plants/trees around them
Observation
Help people observe and track the stages of a Bloom as the seasons change
Appreciation
Remind people to take a moment to appreciate a nearby flowering tree i.e. a Bloom
Information
Provide people with more information about the Blooms they’re looking at
A couple of pointers for what the Blooms app is definitely NOT:
A social media app
A plant identification app
Brainstorming and sorting ideas...
To form the skeleton of the app.
At this point, I ran into a problem.
Having people post about specific locations (possibly around their homes and workplaces) regularly could compromise their safety. Tagging a user’s identity to such sensitive location data could not only open up the possibility of antisocial events, but also create unease in users’ minds.
However, resorting to anonymous posting could lead to copyright infringements of users’ data on a more frequent basis.
So I delved into researching how others have solved this problem, and I realized Google Maps has found a workaround in a very similar scenario: the option to have restricted profiles.
I found this to be a solution that adequately addresses the issues of safety without compromising on the social mechanics of the app, and hence decided to adopt a similar strategy.
Wireframing The Flows
Coming Soon: The Final Designs!
I’m currently working on the final designs for this app, so watch this space for more!
Have you checked out the Nesto app yet?
Check out how I helped Nesto build a line of products that could revolutionize the corporate housing industry in Europe!