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2026 / case study

Spruit.

A plant-care app that learns the rhythm of your home.

Product Design UI/UX Design Branding iOS Design AI Product Design
Spruit shown on iPhone

a calm rhythm for keeping plants alive.

Spruit pairs AI plant identification with a thoughtful plant doctor and a self-tuning watering cadence. Designed end to end, launching on iOS and Android in 2026.

YEAR
2026
ROLE
Product · UI/UX · Brand · AI Illustration
TEAM
Solo
PLATFORM
iOS · Android
LAUNCH
App Stores · 2026
STATUS
Pre-launch
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the problem.

I love plants and I kept killing them. Existing apps either nag with rigid schedules or read like clinical wikis. None of them factored in whether a plant lives indoors or out on a balcony, or what the local weather was actually doing that week. Spruit's job is to replace anxious guesswork with care that reacts to where the plant lives and the climate around it.

rigid schedules that nag clinical advice, no warmth blind to indoor vs outdoor no read on local weather

the process.

Built like a studio with AI on staff: designed, iterated, and kept on a short leash where it mattered.

01
Probe the models, design the failure modes
Compared identification and diagnostic models against real plant photos and edge cases, learned where they hallucinate, and designed the product around those failure modes. Every AI output ships with a confidence score, an alternative path, and a way for the user to correct it.
02
Design the three AI features
Sketched the three places AI actually earns its keep (photo identification, conversational plant doctor, and a self-tuning watering cadence) and the rules each one had to follow. AI fades into the background until the moment it adds value, then it earns being foreground.
03
Direct the brand and mascot system
Designed an illustrated terracotta-pot character with mood states (happy, cool, starry-eyed, crying) that map to plant health. Iterated palette runs, mascot variants, and a library of cosmetic packs (hats, halos, ribbons) earned through care, with a small bench of AI design tools doing the running while I called the shots. No shop, no second currency.
04
Build the core in a weekend, refine after-hours
Got the core flow into shipping shape in a weekend, then kept iterating outside my main-job hours: identification flow, plant doctor, watering cadence, localisation across seven languages. AI tools did a lot of the running; I did the deciding.
05
Localise and ready the launch
Closing in on the App Store and Play Store release: TestFlight rounds with real plant-killers, copy tuned across seven languages, and a free tier that earns the paid Spruit+ instead of locking the basics behind it. spruit.app holds more on each feature.

a studio of one, with AI on the bench.

Spruit is in build for iOS and Android with a 2026 release. Designed end to end: product, brand, mascot, motion, and copy.

Designed every layer of the product
Product, brand, mascot, motion, and copy, all owned end to end.
Brought design judgement to every AI feature
Identification, diagnosis, and watering cadence each shaped around the model's failure modes.
Outvoted a small bench of AI design tools daily
Most outputs reworked or scrapped before anything shipped.
designing with AI

Spruit was the first product where AI sat in my studio, not just in my product. I worked with it the way you'd work with a very fast, very willing junior: give it taste, redirect when it drifts, keep human judgement on the wheel.

The core flow shipped in a weekend. Everything since has been after-hours iteration, tightening mascot states, refining the watering logic, redesigning screens a round at a time. There's more on every feature at spruit.app.

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