Problem
Planning teams managed over 1,000 plant placements across multiple greenhouses using Excel spreadsheets, creating a critical bottleneck.
Spreadsheet-driven planning became a bottleneck as greenhouse operations scaled. Manual layout creation, validation, and physical handoffs consumed hours of planner and statistician time, slowing decisions critical to research timelines.
Solution
Designed a visual grid system that represents the actual physical layout of each greenhouse zone.
Greenhouse selection and overview
Search by location or reservation.
Access multiple reservations & greenhouse placements in a unified workspace.
Preparing zone-level grid view
Visual grid dimensions match the real greenhouse configuration.
Interactive planning placement
Select plant sets with a layout preference.
System highlights the optimal starting point based on quantity
User clicks starting point → system auto-fills placement OR user manually selects placement preference.
Editing placements
Additional details to make the right decision.
Drag and place interaction.
Dynamic reveal with zoom in.
Role
I led the end-to-end product design of the greenhouse planning experience, from field research and journey mapping to high-fidelity prototypes and validation, partnering closely with PM, engineering, and strategy to redefine the planning model.
Research and Discovery
Understanding existing reality
Through on-site observation, user interviews (with over 12 users), and data gathered from journey maps, three critical insights emerged that completely reframed our perspective on the problem.
Co-creation
Bringing the user's mental model to life.
To avoid imposing a designer-driven solution, I needed to see how users naturally visualized placement without constraints. Crazy 8 was the perfect activity to bring these mental models to life.
Unexpected signal: Multiple users independently drew progressive disclosure and auto placement interaction, reinforcing that spatial data demands spatial interaction.
Testing and Iteration
Testing revealed where visual understanding was clear, but interaction was not.
Before committing engineering effort, we conducted a click test to validate whether the proposed interaction model aligned with users’ mental models and reduced decision friction.
Users clearly understood what the grid represented. The test revealed friction in how and where actions were taken.
What we needed to validate:
Comprehension
Agency vs automation
Action clarity
Final Design Outcome
The Grid became more than a visual tool; it redefined how teams plan, track, and adapt plant placements across facilities with confidence and flexibility.
What started as an Excel sheet replacement evolved into a visual grid-based planning system that aligned with how users actually think and work on the greenhouse floor.
Impact
65% of the users switched from Excel within 2 month
Users went from manually verifying every result to trusting the system.
Enabled teams to iterate and adjust layouts without restarting or revalidating plans.
Minimized data-entry errors and duplicated efforts, leading to a costly validation process.
Increased users' trust and confidence while planning plant placement.
Reflection
This project taught me that even in technical, data-heavy environments, design’s role is to create clarity and confidence.
0→1 Products Need Quick Wins
MVP had to deliver immediate value, or users would revert to Excel. We prioritized the one workflow that caused the most pain (initial placement planning) and nailed that before expanding the scope.
Trust is Earned Through Transparency
The auto-suggestion feature only worked because I showed users the WHY behind suggestions. If it had been a black box, they would've ignored it or not trusted it.
Users Don't Always Know What They Need
When I asked users what they wanted, they said "a better Excel sheet." But watching them work revealed they needed a completely different mental model, visual and spatial, not tabular.
Designing this system reaffirmed my belief that meaningful innovation happens when empathy meets complexity and when design helps people see their work in a new light.