Final Project: Fully Customizable Plant Displays
I love fake plants. A lot. It MAY be because I cannot keep a real plant alive, but nevertheless, my home has always been littered with them (there are 10 in my condo currently), and I’m constantly shopping for new ones.
The big problem I have with them, though, is the lack of customization. They are usually already glued into a vase that I can’t choose and are always a little basic. This got me thinking…what if you could choose your own plants, your own vase, and there was a way to mix & match them all together? That thought lead me to my idea for a final project.
My goal is to have a clickable prototype of what the website would look like, along with 3D models of the bases I design. I’m hoping I can design somewhere in the neighborhood of 4–5 vases, along with the pieces I need that will be used to hold the plants to make them swappable. Here are the key features I’m going to be focusing on:
Website Design.
I want the user to be able to click through the website to mix and match easily as they browse. Ideally, the flowers or plants will line up with the bases so users will get a general idea of how a pair would look. I also want them to be able to not only grab pre-made bouquets, but build their own from individual flowers. Here is a sketch of how I think the general sorting capabilities will work:
I envision the function of it to be something like Cher’s iconic closet in the modern classic, “Clueless”:
It’ll be a little more refined than this Windows program from the early 90’s (hopefully), but this is the general idea.
As for how the pictures of the flower options will be displayed, I’m using these pictures as my inspiration:
I will be using Adobe Illustrator and XD to build out the website features. XD has a great prototyping feature which I hope to use to create something clickable.
I also want to find a way to incorporate Adobe Dimension so I can create some 3D product visualization on the site.
Geometric vases.
I’ve always loved the juxtaposition of geometric shapes and flowers. I actually almost got a tattoo of that drawing on the left, if that gives you any idea of how big of a fan I am.
I want the vase models to have some of those geometric qualities so they look super unique. I plan to design them in Fusion, making some different sizes and models. I am going to make an attempt to make some parametric elements as well, but we’ll see if I can actually accomplish that with the design.
Once they are complete, I plan to 3D print at least two models to present. I still have a lot of work to do to figure out how that would work and what it will look like….but you don’t know until you try, right?
Swappable.
This is going to be my biggest challenge. I want to try to create some sort of device that holds the plants and slides into the different vases. This is so the flowers will stay in place and stay presentable in each different shaped vase. I’m thinking it will be a plastic cylinder or cone that the flowers are attached to, which can slide and snap into each vase. I may have to create a few parametric sizes for small and large vases, but we’ll see if I can get there. Here’s my sketch of what I’m thinking so far:
And also a photo inspiration, for good measure:
I’m so excited to get started on this project! I might be slightly ambitious with this one, but I think it will look really cool, and we’ll see where I end up!
