LeafBook

Inspiration

Nearly 7-in-10 GenZ and Millenials consider themselves "plant parents," according to One Poll and Deseret News [1].

This statistic has been linked with over $1.7 billion spent annually on houseplants by those 18-34 [2]. Combined with pandemic-era social disengagement, our team strongly believes that there is an opportunity for a platform in this area to succeed.

As plant parents ourselves, we were thus inspired to make a social platform that was centralized around plant culture, which has been found to reduce stress [3] and, based on observations of our peers, is something universal among most college students.

LeafBook capitalizes on social connection through "plant babies" that allow people to interact over their mutual love of plant culture. Instead of a social feed swamped by ads and other sponsored content, LeafBook creates greater opportunities for authentic socialization and connection via a group-chat-like environment designed to make a user feel like a part of a larger community.

Sources:

[1] Wallace, Anne. "Survey Shows 67% of Millennials Find Taking Care of Plants a Challenge." Deseret News, Deseret News, 27 Jan. 2020, https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2020/1/27/21083948/millennials-pressures-plant-parenting-survey-parenthood-houseplant.

[2] Boyle, Matthew. "The One Thing Millennials Haven't Killed Is Houseplants." Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 11 Apr. 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-11/the-one-thing-millennials-haven-t-killed-is-houseplants.

[3] Lee, Min-Sun, et al. "Interaction with Indoor Plants May Reduce Psychological and Physiological Stress by Suppressing Autonomic Nervous System Activity in Young Adults: A Randomized Crossover Study." Journal of Physiological Anthropology, BioMed Central, 28 Apr. 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4419447/.

What LeafBook does

Allows users to create a virtual library of their plants
Add/remove plants
Edit plant details (size, color, etc.)
Plant horoscope tracking
Monitor plant health
Share plant updates
Share posts: either marked as a "Need Help" thread or "Plant Update" thread
Comment and reply to comments
See a timeline for each plant
Receive notifications

How we built it

We initially wanted to make LeafBook into a mobile app, using Figma for front-end work and Java for the backend. However, after trial and error and further consultation with a mentor, we decided as a team to develop a website instead, continuing to prototype and design on Figma.

Challenges we ran into

Choosing an idea. Much of our time was spent brainstorm and ideation.
Connecting the Front-end (done on Figma) with the Java code written. We ultimately decided, based on time-constraint and technical knowledge, to finish the project purely on Figma. However, in the future, we aim to connect the front-end and the backend using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to create a fully functioning website!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Ideated and collaborated to design a thoughtful User Interface and Experience using FigJam to map the User Experience Journey.
Demonstrated Object-Oriented Programming via Java by creating User and Plant Classes with instantiating and modifying functionalities.
Communicated candidly and worked to organize team roles and responsibilities.
Created a tactful project aimed at uniting people and facilitating conversation in a welcoming and safe virtual environment.

What we learned

The difficulty of integrating HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Java in less than a day.
The importance of brainstorming, ideation, and the selection of a good idea.
Always ask for help! Speaking to a DubHacks mentor about how we can integrate the front-end and backend helped us make critical project decisions and visualize the future of this product.

What's next for LeafBook

We plan to take our project to the next level in the short term by making it into a fully functioning web application. We hope to combine our existing Java-based backend to our Front-end and use web frameworks to have JavaScript call the Java program to create User and Plant objects. This will enable us to create the infrastructure to build the social connectivity necessary for our platform's value proposition.