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Suello

Suello

Suello

Suello

An agilno venture

Building the brand, app 
and launch for a smart planter that works with 
any plant, in any soil.

agency

Agilno

ROLE

Lead Designer

TEAM

Founder & Product Owner
Project Manager
Marketing & Creative
App Developer
External Ad Agency

timeline

2024 - 2025

Deliverables

Brand, UX/UI, Motion,
Campaign creative

The Project

A software company's first hardware bet.

Suello is a planter with five sensors, tracking soil moisture, light, temperature, humidity and pH, pair with an app that turns those signals into clear, specific actions. It was the first thing Agilno had made for a shelf instead of a screen, and the studio's own venture.

The aim was to fund it on Kickstarter, with the planter as the first in a line of connected home devices.

The difficulty was one of sequence. The brand, the site, the app and the campaign all had to be designed before there was a planter to point at.

Taking the guesswork out of plant care.

A yellow leaf can mean drought, drowning, or the wrong window. By the time it shows, the cause is weeks old. Suello's premise was to read the cause, not the symptom.

FROM THE GROUND UP

Defining the brand. Where a smart planter belongs.

Suello arrived with no identity, no product to photograph, and a position spread over three sectors that share very little visually. Working directly with the founder, the brand was built from purpose outward.

The three principles shown pulled against each other. Innovation asked for something that read as technology, while harmony and mindfulness asked for an object calm enough to disappear into a room. The aesthetic work had to hold both at once.

The brand had to reach very different buyers.

The same identity had to work for early adopters, for people who want plants to thrive with less effort, and for anyone furnishing a home. The brand had to carry the technology without leading with it, which set a ceiling on how specialised it could afford to look.

Creating demand for a product that was still at the factory.

A crowdfunding campaign converts an audience it already has rather than building one. The funding target had been modelled on 25,000 sign-ups converting at 8%, which put the first real weight of the launch on this page.

Creating demand for a product that was still at the factory.

A crowdfunding campaign converts an audience it already has rather than building one. The funding target had been modelled on 25,000 sign-ups converting at 8%, which put the first real weight of the launch on this page.

Interest only survives if the product feels real, so the renders opened the planter up instead of dressing it. Something you can inspect is harder to doubt than something you are only shown.

Building the app

Turning sensor readings into specific plant care.

Suello was designed to become the home of any plant, in any soil. The same reading means different things depending on what is planted, so the app carried what each species prefers and set it against what the sensors were reporting. The gap between the two was the product, and it had to be specified before any of it could be drawn.

Building the app

Turning sensor readings into specific plant care.

Suello was designed to become the home of any plant, in any soil. The same reading means different things depending on what is planted, so the app carried what each species prefers and set it against what the sensors were reporting. The gap between the two was the product, and it had to be specified before any of it could be drawn.

Finding the friction before the build.

A working wireframe prototype went in front of five people before anything was committed. All five finished every task, so the value was in where they hesitated.

Telling the app what you had planted was ambiguous enough to stall setup, and that flow was resequenced before a single screen was designed.

Finding the friction before the build.

A working wireframe prototype went in front of five people before anything was committed. All five finished every task, so the value was in where they hesitated.

Telling the app what you had planted was ambiguous enough to stall setup, and that flow was resequenced before a single screen was designed.

Finding the friction before the build.

A working wireframe prototype went in front of five people before anything was committed. All five finished every task, so the value was in where they hesitated.

Telling the app what you had planted was ambiguous enough to stall setup, and that flow was resequenced before a single screen was designed.

The brand moved, so the app stayed neutral.

The planter was still in production and going through its own iterations, so features were drawn to survive a change in hardware without a redesign.

Halfway through, the founder commissioned a new identity from an outside firm, and it arrived with no space in the app’s schedule to absorb it.

The library was built structured and styled lightly, so engineering stayed unblocked. The cost was an MVP stripped back from what the brand deserved.

The brand moved, so the app stayed neutral.

The planter was still in production and going through its own iterations, so features were drawn to survive a change in hardware without a redesign.

Halfway through, the founder commissioned a new identity from an outside firm, and it arrived with no space in the app’s schedule to absorb it.

The library was built structured and styled lightly, so engineering stayed unblocked. The cost was an MVP stripped back from what the brand deserved.

The brand moved, so the app stayed neutral.

The planter was still in production and going through its own iterations, so features were drawn to survive a change in hardware without a redesign.

Halfway through, the founder commissioned a new identity from an outside firm, and it arrived with no space in the app’s schedule to absorb it.

The library was built structured and styled lightly, so engineering stayed unblocked. The cost was an MVP stripped back from what the brand deserved.

A muted smart planter is just a planter.

Push notifications are one of the fastest ways to get there. That was the risk to design against, so each alert was defined by what sets it off, what it can interrupt, and how often it can come back.

A muted smart planter is just a planter.

Push notifications are one of the fastest ways to get there. That was the risk to design against, so each alert was defined by what sets it off, what it can interrupt, and how often it can come back.

A muted smart planter is just a planter.

Push notifications are one of the fastest ways to get there. That was the risk to design against, so each alert was defined by what sets it off, what it can interrupt, and how often it can come back.

THE LAUNCH

Producing a campaign on a weekly deadline.

The audience the model assumed was 25 to 45 years old, tech-comfortable and design-led, and the campaign's job was turning that into an email list ready to convert at launch.


An agency ran the paid media, and it needed fourteen weeks of new creative. That volume is why I set up a system, so every week hit all eight Meta ad angles and each concept shipped in three formats.

The funnel beat its cost targets, and missed on intent.

Finding the friction before the build.

Click-through and cost per click both finished past goal, so reach was never the problem. Sign-up conversion was, at 13% against a 20% target.

The cheapest, highest-reach weeks converted at roughly half the rate of the rest. Interest was inexpensive to buy. Commitment wasn't.

A working wireframe prototype went in front of five people before anything was committed. All five finished every task, so the value was in where they hesitated.

Telling the app what you had planted was ambiguous enough to stall setup, and that flow was resequenced before a single screen was designed.

Featured by Kickstarter. Half-funded in a day, and stopped the same week.

The brand moved, so the app stayed neutral.

Around forty of roughly five thousand sign-ups pledged on the first day, which is the conversion the pre-launch funnel had already warned about.

The goal printed on the page was a threshold, not the business case, and the team had set the real bar before anything went live. So we cancelled the campaign, before any backer was charged. Thirty more days would have cost money to confirm what day one had already said.

The planter was still in production and going through its own iterations, so features were drawn to survive a change in hardware without a redesign.

Halfway through, the founder commissioned a new identity from an outside firm, and it arrived with no space in the app’s schedule to absorb it.

The library was built structured and styled lightly, so engineering stayed unblocked. The cost was an MVP stripped back from what the brand deserved.

On reflection

What I'd want in place before starting again.

Lock the identity first.

Building a product, a site and a campaign on an identity still in motion cost us consistency and one clean story. Designing around it was right. But it was still the most expensive thing about the project.

Test the demand first.

Demand was assumed, not measured, and the plan was built on it. 14 weeks of media is a slow, expensive way to test an assumption. A short paid test up front would have cost a fraction of the campaign.

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