PLANT PEOPLE

Intro

By observing plants in Regent’s Park and Royal Botanical Garden, I realized that human beings are obssed with distorting the original appearance of plants, changing their characteristics using pruning tools, only to satisﬁy the pursuit of good-looking. Plants became tools to show aesthetics and creativity, the relatioship between human and plants is unhealthy. This project is intended to explore the relationship between human beings and the nature. By placing human in the situation of plants, making people think differently about what makes for a harmonious and healthy relationship.

Deliverables:

Website Design

Interaction Design

User Experience

Branding

Year

2022

Research Insight

Current message-based online communication costs too many efforts, thinking about what to say and how the other person understands is exhausting. People value implicit signals (presence, attention, time-spent) more than constant messaging.

Communication Space

A shared, plant-based environment where each relationship “grows”, a calm micro-ecosystem for presence, care, and attention.

Connect & Communicate

Define connection via ambient actions (views, likes, proximity) as well as direct messages. Interactions are soft, nonverbal, and low-pressure.

Data to Feeling

AI agent collects implicit interactions and translate them into plant growth and health condition, turning data into living forms that support trust and closeness.

Design language

Softness

Slowness

Organic

Gentle lines, rounded corners, plant-like curves, and low-contrast colors.

Soft gradients, slow transitions, micro-interactions, and a sense of natural growth.

Branching forms, leaf-vein patterns, breathing-like motion, and ecological network shapes.

Home Page & Login

GARDEN is an online communication platform that visualizes user's interpersonal relationships as living plants that grow through implicit signals, shaped by the presence, visits, rhythms, and other quiet forms of care.

Garden Page

In Garden Page users can view all of the connections plants' growth status. Hovering shows friend’s online status along with the intimacy score.

You can view more by scrolling right, or click on the “Switch to Grid View” button to check out the grid view.

Friends Profile

On friend's profile page, users can view their bio, see shared connection plant, and access the connection garden via the left sidebar, while browsing her posts on the right with the newest post highlighted at the top-left. Opening the post brings up an enlarged view where users can like, save, or comment, and also read comments from mutual friends.

Plant Growth

Here’s a demo showing how the implicit interactions are calculated and converted into intimacy score, and how does that affect the connection plant growth. At each stage, AI agent intervenes to analyze the current interaction patterns and provide suggestions to help the connection plant thrive.