The Plant Doctor
The Plant Doctor is a Python application I built for my Application Development I course.
I love houseplants–I have nearly 100 different varieties of plants living in my home! I began collecting plants as a hobby during the Covid19 pandemic and quickly fell in love with taking care of them. My collection includes monsteras, philodendrons, anthuriums, and my favorite: hoyas. The design elements used in the graphic user interface are inspired by the delicate, speckled leaves of hoyas.
With the 100+ different species I have collected over the years, it can be challenging to remember what each plant needs to thrive. Some need more water and more sunlight, while others simply prefer to be left alone. This is what inspired me to build The Plant Doctor.
In the beginning stages, I knew I wanted the application to not only be useful, but to also look beautiful. In my Application Development 1 course, we briefly touched on GUIs but never fully dove into them. The class simply required a functioning app of the students’ choice. However, I wanted to take my course project one step further by incorporating a custom-built, plant-inspired GUI.
I began by creating a simple visual identity for The Plant Doctor using Adobe Illustrator; this included several logo options, some fun fonts, and a color scheme. Then, I brought these elements into Figma to create a prototype of the finished product.
The Branding:
At first, I used Tkinter to start the GUI. However, I quickly learned that Tkitner alone would not give me the modern-looking GUI I wanted. After some digging, I discovered CustomTkinter–created by Tom Schimansky to provide more extensive design capabilities on top of Tkinter’s default features.
The course project was structured to follow the Agile project management methodology (specifically the Scrum framework, with a sprint each 1-2 weeks). I used a GitHub repository to manage my code and make commits. At the end of the semester, I got to presented my app with a demo, and I received a 100!
The Plant Doctor was the first application I built on my own (without direction from a professor) from start to finish. In all, this project took me over 25 hours, and I am very proud of the finished product!
