Friendly Paws

The Friendly Paws is not just a place for finding a temporary home for your pet. This is a place where you can volunteer to become a foster pet parent.

Overview

Role

Tools

Duration

An exercise in User Experience Design applying Design Thinking Approach |

Finding a safe and trustable home for pets is a daunting tasks for their owners and here is the Friendly Paws to solve this problem. This also brings an opportunity for people to volunteer as foster parents and earn some extra cash through it.

My role was to carry out user research to discover if there’s a user need for such a product, identify user behavior, identify key tasks, develop a prototype and run a usability test.

Figma

Adobe CC Suite

Miro

Notion

Concept

Jotform

Research - 5 Days

Prototyping - 5 Days

The Challenge

The Challenge here is to design a solution for people to find a safe, trustworthy, reliable home for their pets, while they are travelling and are away from home.

This also bring an opportunity for people to even volunteer and earn money as foster pet parents.

Design Thinking

I always wanted to apply design thinking for end to end designing of a product and here I got an opportunity to design the entire product from start to finish keeping design thinking at the core.

Empathise

Understanding the User

To emphathise with the user and to know exactly what are the problems and poin points of users are, I conducted a survey using Jotforms and below are the survey results. This first step helped me in getting a big picture understanding of whether their is a need of such system or not.

Qualitative Interviews

Along with the survey I also interviewed 3 people of different age groups and professions. They all were pet owners of cats and dogs.

Contextual Inquiry: A semi-structured interview to obtain context of use. Users are observed while working in their natural environment.

I did one-on-one interviews over call to learn about the user’s concerns and understand their pain points.

User Goals & Insights

After all the surveys and interviews I gathered some of the primary and secondary goals of the user. These steps were important to deeply empathise with our target users.

Primary User Goals

Find a place to keep his/her pets easily.
The place/person should be trustable and trained to take care of pets.
Directly connect with the person taking care of the pet.
User should be able to keep a track on his/her pet while he/she is away by getting updates/notifications/or live stream.

Secondary User Goals

Find a place to volunteer as a foster pet parent.
Earn some extra money from taking care of pet.
Directly connect with the person owner of the pet to know about the vaccination, behaviour and specific needs of the pet.
Should be able to directly connect with the pet owner in case of emergencies.

Define

This section of design thinking approach takes a deep dive into research, understanding and empathising with our users and their pain points by creating user personas, user stories, gathering insights through user journey and utilising it to find opportunity areas for the product design.

User Persona

Personas are fictional characters, which I created based upon my research to represent the different user types that are potential users of this product.

Story Boarding

I decided to create a story board to give a visual narrative of the user experiences and and a perspective solution for the user to interact within the context of the problem. This helped me in visualising the user problem and needs.

User Journey Map

James' Journey

James needs to go on a 3 day trip. He logs into the Friendly Paws website.
He surfs among all the daycare packages available and selects the one that suits best for his needs.
He needs to fill a form where he needs to mention all the details about him and his pet. (Details include vaccination documents, pet’s medicines, allergies or any other specific requirement.)
He then book an appointment and waits for the verification and confirmation of his booking.
James gets a text message and an email from the Friendly Paws and then they connect him directly to the person who will be taking care of his pet.
The volunteered for the pet care have gone through a proper background check and training to handle pets.
James also gets to avail for the live stream, regular updates and notifications along with the package.
He went to the trip feeling relaxed and the regular notifications and updates make him feel connected with his pet.
He then after his travel meets his pet with joy.

Special Cases:

“What if the pet gets unwell or met with an accident?”
Caretaker will have a detailed list/ guide from the pet world to reach out to the listed vets available in the region. (Payments can be taken from both the parties depending on the situation.)

How might we create an online application that can help pet owners to keep their pets safely without any worries?

Ideate

This section consists of some of the assumptions along with the requirement gathering, constraints and final trade-offs I made to proceed with the design solution. Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and getting innovative solutions.

Product - Website Requirements

Based on James’s goals, needs and pain points, the website should be:

Assumptions

Below are some assumptions made for the project.

Volunteers need to provide a background check and other details before joining the Friendly Paws to ensure the safety and security of pets.
Pet owners need to provide proof of vaccination for their pets beforehand, and for new users during the signup process.
The documents will be verified by Friendly Paws and after that, the users will get confirmation on their bookings.
The pets who do not have up-to-date vaccinations will not be allowed. The prerequisites will be mentioned on the website.
Friendly Paws keeps a record of vets and other essential requirements for any emergencies.
James has access to his laptop/mobile and internet during this trip to catch live updates of his pet.

Constraint

The below constraints were made for this project to keep the design solution in a linear path in order to achieve the priority goal of the user.

Live stream currently includes in the package itself.
James can only view information for 1 pet at a time.
James needs to provide all the vaccination documents and details during the signup process itself.

Trade-Offs

Considering the limited time duration for the project, the below trade-offs were made for this project.

Suresh as a Volunteer: Suresh is a pet owner and currently his priority is to find a safe place for his pet to stay when he is not around. Although I have designed the solution for Suresh as a Pet owner but due to time constraints, I am currently focussing more on the linear solution of Suresh as a pet owner.
Pet World will review and verify the authenticity of the details provided by both the pet owners and volunteers. There is no automation process of the same. 
Again due to time constraints I haven't designed screen showing payments details.

User Flow 1

The following flow was designed to help illustrate how James would move through the website to reach to his goal.

Here, both the new user and the existing user can see the packages options only after successfully logging in. And hence, important information is hidden from the user which needs to be provided upfront.
Due to this, I decided to put the package information on the home page itself. After clicking on booking it will redirect the user to the Sign-Up or Login page.
I also decided to implement the same solution for a person who wants to volunteer, to keep the user experience simple and easy to understand.

User Flow 2

The following flow was designed to help illustrate how James would move through the website to reach to his goal.

Here, both the new user and the existing user can see the packages options only after successfully logging in. And hence, important information is hidden from the user which needs to be provided upfront.
Existing user now will be able to directly login and book the appointment without going into the pet and owner detail section. This reduces the clicks for the existing user.

Final Flow

Below is the final flow I decided to proceed with.

Here, both the new user and the existing user can see the packages options only after successfully logging in. And hence, important information is hidden from the user which needs to be provided upfront.
Here in either paths the user will get an option to see the package option. If he/she has selected the package before signing and logging in, then the package option is shown as a confirmation step.

Information Architecture

Based on the above user flows and looking at the most efficient one, I created the below sitemap.

I also included the volunteer section along with the main goal.

Prototype

This part of the design process will explore the wire-framing and prototyping of the user experience for Friendly Paws.

Paper Prototypes & Wireframes

I started sketching my main ideas on papers keeping in mind the main objectives and goals of James. After sketching ideas on paper and finalizing the flow on paper. I decide to create low fidelity prototypes to proceed with the designing.

Visual Design

I created the below mood-board to choose the right colors and theme for the whole product.

Primary Colors

Simple warm pastel colors.

Secondary Colors

Pastel but a little bit bright and contrast to add a fun element to the website.

Fonts Used

To keep the font modern, approachable, and clean I used Sans Serif Fonts on the website.

Selecting the right colors:

To make the website desirable aesthetics are important and hence choosing the right colour plays an important role in the overall look for the product.
I decided to go with the below warm colours and then thought of going with the pastels.
Pastels are less saturated than primary colours, making them feel light, soft, and calming.
Here, I used pastel colours keeping in mind the theme of Friendly Paws.
This definitely excites someone who is friendly, sensitive, gentle and caring which all dog lovers are.

Logo & Pattern

I designed a pattern which can be used throughout the website to add some texture to the visuals. I choose a simple paw illustration to make a pattern and use the same as the logo. I used changing opacity on different occasions to create multiple visual elements with the same design.

Icons & Other Elements

I created the below icons to create a consistent visual feel throughout the website.

Adding Gamification

I have read a lot about Gamification and thought of implement a small element of it in my design.

What is Gamification?
Gamification is a technique which designers use to insert gameplay elements in the non-gaming settings, so they enhance user engagement with the product and service.

I used this concept here by creating a "take a stroll" button and a dotted arrow to help the user go through the website. A lot of animations and other elements can be added here but due to time constraints, I had to limit myself to this.

High Fidelity & Interactive Prototypes

I used Figma to create high-Fidelity mockups of the entire website.

Below is the link to the Figma file.

https://www.figma.com/file/WqdSF2sQ5socJ8wGICtFWM/PET-WORLD?node-id=0%3A1

Conclusion

I really enjoyed working on this project and learned a lot throughout the journey. I kept the time constraints as a vital challenge which helped me getting more close to understand my strengths and weaknesses.

Following the Design thinking Approach helped me a lot to empathise with user and create a product which speaks for itself.

Next Steps

Mobile application can be designed for this product as it would be beneficial for users to operate Friendly Paws through a mobile itself.

I would also like to include a more intuitive process for users as volunteers.