Summary

Application to that offers a new and advanced way to adopt a pet, that helps animal lovers find furry friends to adopt from a shelter. It simplifies the adoption process by offering pet profile and breed info.

Problem

Millions of animals are currently in shelters and foster homes awaiting adoption. For this project, design an experience that will help connect people looking for a new pet with the right companion for them. There are many healthy dogs at shelters that would make excellent pets and need homes. Meanwhile, people buy thousands of dogs from puppy mills instead of adopting them.

Solution

To solve this problem, I created a pet adoption app to connect adopters to find pets that match their lifestyle. Providing basic information of the animal such as breed, age, name as well as a one-line description that helps users to understand if it is a potential match or not.

User Research

I wanted to understand our users better. I created a survey with specific questions to learn about dog adoption apps and to understand what the audience really needs. what kind of users would be using this service.

Research Finding

Competitive Analysis

I performed a competitive analysis of Pet adoption, Pet Finder, and Pet Harbor. I also conducted online research to understand the flow and features of other pet adoption applications throughout this analysis. I also did random pet app research to get inspiration for the different services offered for pet owners.

User Personas

To gather more information and help me understand the type of users I was designing the pet app for, I talked to three of my friends that represent my three different user groups: first-time pet owners and experienced pet owners, so I created three user personas based on my interview with the 3 survey participants. These three different personas both want to look for the best pet that matches with their lifestyle, Yet they have different goals and different frustrations.

User Stories

This exercise was very helpful in identifying the important key features that I needed to build around. I wrote User Stores to reflect the top things users are looking to see and do when opening a pet adoption app, it makes me think much more about what the user wants so I broke out some features for each section using the "As a user, I want to… so that I can.

High priority

I want detailed information about pet

I want to be able to look at pets online first

I want to see the adoption process

I want to see pet profile in app

Medium priority

I want to be able to provide their location to filter to local results and show nearby shelters

I want to be able to access the contact information of the (shelter, breeder) of a pet

I want a list of shelters close to my location.

I want pet’s age to the profile

Low priority

I want to add my email to pet profile

I want desktop accessibility

I want location to the pet's profile

I want mobile accessibility

User Flows

I also created a user flow to think through a user path to take through different scenarios and tasks and show the flow for a user who wants to adopt a pet. The flow identifies the path a user would take to find the right match and start the adoption process. It also listed all the features that would require to run this app.

By mapping the user’s journey and possible decisions, I can design the key pages and necessary steps to follow in order to complete the task with zero error

Wireframe

Before designing my wireframe, I jumped straight into a quick sketch to map out the user flow. I tried to put in all the features I had in mind. Wireframing is an important phase in my design process. A big challenge here was incorporating all the needed information into a clean-looking design, and I Wanted to keep navigation easy for the users.

Usability Testing

With the wireframe prototype, I had three in-person usability tests. Each user had three tasks that they needed to complete. I prepared the clickable low-fi prototypes(made in Figma). The overall quality and ease of navigation throughout the whole design. All of the participants were able to flow from one task to the other effortlessly with very little trouble on completing the task flows, so no iterations were needed to be made.

Developing the logo

Next, I spent some time creating a brand for this app was fun. I have sketched out some ideas based on the insights that I got from previous research and brainstorm about the brand image. I want to imply caring and loving meaning through BestBuddy brand logo. In addition, I want to keep it simple and straight forward.

Creating a Style Guide

I finalize the brand identify of BestBuddy with a complete style guide. To create a friendly and welcoming, I chose a warmer color palette. I chose to use red for the logo. The red represents a committed, trustworthy and playful feeling. These are the main characters that I want to emphasize to BestBuddy users.

Final Outcome

Conclusion

Designing a website that encourages people to adopt dogs rather than buy from breeders was a project I really enjoyed. I had a lot of fun working on this exercise. As a UX designer, my goal is to make a difference in the world with my designs and be able to design a website where people can find a dog that matches their lifestyle.