dcpatton

Why all the fuss

The (Lil) Green Patch application on the Facebook platform has been steadily enhanced with the addition of new features. The latest is the introduction of Gardener Levels when sending plants. If the application’s forum page is any indication, then this feature seems to have generated quite a buzz amongst the users. I think this is because unlike some of the other features (Mushroom house, gold, etc.) the levels come into play during one of the most popular activities of the application, the sending of plants for friends’ gardens.

Background

(Lil) Green Patch lets you send plants to your friends as additions to their gardens. They receive them as standard Facebook requests which they can accept or ignore. Users are encouraged to send plants because that is the method to earn the credits necessary to save rain forests. As users send more plants they unlock more optional plants that they can send. This has led to a community of users that ask for certain plants or send certain plants depending on their particular tastes.

What happened

Prior to the Levels feature, users had a view of all the possible choices of plants in one giant scrollable selection area. With the new Levels feature the plants are broken up into different screens (labeled Level 1-5 currently) with 20 plants (and two limited edition plants which are visible on every level) per level. When you first click to Send Plants, you are placed at the latest unlocked plant. This could be on the Level 4 Gardener tab. If the plant you want to select is on the Level 2 Gardener tab, it requires an extra click to find it. Some users have taken offense to this change because of the extra clicks required to locate the plant they are looking for.

Why

I think this new feature is primarily a usability enhancement. If you don’t have a scroll wheel mouse, then it was getting to be very painful to scroll around the selection of plants. From the application developers point of view, it also now creates additional page views, which means additional ad impressions that may pay for the resources needed to support the new pages and maybe even provide more money toward the cause. Now, if we can just convince them to utilize a nicer color palette than green and yellow!

I am currently a Level 5 Gardener and a Level 3 Mariner (on Lil Blue Cove), what are you? Anybody using the other new features? Leave me your explanation in the comments or let me know if you’d like to guest post with an explanation.

UPDATE: And then they were gone. The Levels function has been removed and all plants are visible on the same page.