Connecting people with their forever furry friends
Design Sprint City Pups
Role
Timeline
Tools
Methods
UX Designer
1 Week
Figma, G Suite
Research, Usability Testing
Sketching, Wireframes, storyboarding
High Fidelity Mockups, Prototyping
Overview
This Design Sprint was a modified sprint process because I was the only designer.
Problem
The popularity of adopting a dog has grown a lot in recent years, particularly with those who live in the city. City pups is a new startup that aims to help people find their perfect dog in the city. Through their user research and interviews, they discovered that many people struggle to find a dog that fits into their unique needs.
Goals
Increase adoption rates
Happier Owners
Better "forever" Homes for dogs
Solution
Help people feel at ease adopting their first dog by filtering or narrowing down options based on the user's specific lifestyle constraints and making the first meet and greet an easy process to help with follow through from users.
Day 1 Map
User Map I
User Map II
User Map III
Selection: User Map II
selecting a dog by user’s lifestyle,
a dog that meets the user’s lifestyle
I am going with this option because it seems like the potential dog owners want a dog to fit their lifestyle instead of the other way around. A lot of people interviewed said that they need a small dog to fit into their studio apartment, or be good around other dogs when going out for walks. This indicates that all users want a non-reactive dog that is low maintenance.
The main goals are to
1. Have a dog that fits in with the user’s lifestyle
2. Narrow down choices and browsing
3. Be able to get specific details in the form of videos and virtual/in-person meet ups
Having prospective dog owners narrow down their lifestyle wants and needs, it’ll be easier to filter what type of dog can already fit into their lifestyle with no major disruptions to the user’s daily life and routines. Also, adding more video footage of the dogs and an option to have an in person and/or virtual visit will allow the users to see the dog they want in a more concrete and tangible way. Users will be able to gauge the dog’s personality and have a chance to ask specific questions.
Day 2 Sketch
Competitive Analysis
Rover
Little questionnaire of what the user wants, location, and available dates (user specific needs/lifestyle)
Next info about what type of doing the user has.
Sitters listed from price, low to high. Can clearly see where the sitter is located, along with reviews
Clicked on a profile and there’s a price breakdown for transparency. Pictures with the dogs that Carey took care of and a CTA button to contact carey.
There’s also Carey's available dates and a little blurb about Carey and what his skills are.
PetFinder
Find a pet by location or group name off to the right hand side of the screen. Not very good layout, the Dog Adoption stories were more eye catching than actually looking up dog adoption agencies.
Listed dog adoption agencies with where they are located. Contact information available. Clicked on the first option.
The dog adoption agency homepage shows the dogs that are adopted. Website was difficult to use, I had to look around to see where the available dogs were. High likelihood of abandoning the dog search due to difficulty of navigating the website.
ZocDoc
Landing page is simple. You write your condition/what kind of doctor you are looking for, your location, and the type of insurance you carry. Cover’s the user’s want of finding a doctor for their particular ailment, near their location, and if the doctor they see will be covered by their insurance.
Lists the doctor by rating, shows available times slots in yellow, and off to the right side of the screen can see where the doctors are located so the user can see which doctor is close by/how far the user may need to travel.
Hinge
Users fill out a questionnaire setting up their profile. Users also get to also fill out a few prompts to showcase their personality.
Users can then browse and send a “like” to other users that they would like to potentially date.
Standouts sections show people that are most closely aligned with the user’s preferences.
Users can then put their own preferences/filter by age range, distance, ethnicity, religion, height, etc. This shows that each user can filter/choose what they are looking for in a partner.
I chose pet finder and rover because both apps deal with pets and pet owner preferences. I wanted to see an easy way to make appointments so I chose zocdoc because they go by the patient’s wants and needs and the app also has a virtual call or in-person option for the providers listed. Lastly, I chose Hinge because it allows for the user to choose their preferences and how the options shown to the user is only what the user wants in a partner, making it a more narrow search instead of a broad general search.
Crazy 8 Sketch
Solution Sketch
The most critical screen will be the questionnaire screen. The user will answer questions based on their lifestyle and that will help narrow down their search for the dog that matches their lifestyle the best.
I chose the questionnaire screen as the most critical screen because many times people will go into a “want” mindset instead of a “need” mindset. Allowing users to answer questions about what their current lifestyle looks like it’ll help the user think more about what they need in a dog instead of what they want in a dog.
Answering questions about one’s lifestyle will also help users critically think about their living situation and will help narrow down their dog adoption choices so that the user does not feel overwhelmed by the large amount of dog profiles that will not work with their unique situations. Hopefully, narrowing the choices with best fit dog profiles, the user will be able to make their decision and adopt a dog that works best for them.
The critical screen shown in the middle will ask the user a series of questions to better understand the user’s needs and wants in looking for the dog that best matches their lifestyle. It’ll be interactive and the user will get to select boxes before clicking the next button and the app will generate a list of dogs that best suits the user based on their answers.
Day 3 Decide: Create Storyboard
In addition to the 3 solution screens, I wanted to address the issue of not having enough information about the dog and setting up a date where the potential owner can meet the dog. In the profile of the dog I added more photos and videos so that the users can see more of the dog. I also included little personality characteristics of the dog to the profile so that the user can get the pertinent information they need instead of reading through a long bio about the dog.
Other features I added are if the dog’s profile is saved by other users, and a button so that a user can schedule a meet and greet with the dog. I made the meet and greet appointment process easy and straightforward so that users can move and act quickly to meet their potential dog.
Day 4 Prototype
For the prototype I wanted to focus on 2 main actions, the lifestyle preferences questionnaire and how the user sets us a meet and greet. The questionnaire helps the user narrow down what their wants and constraints are in owning a dog; narrowing down only to the dogs that are best matched with the user’s particular lifestyle.
As for the profile of the dogs, I used the main personality traits of the dogs that user’s want to see instead of reading a long worded bio for each dog. Instead, the user can scan over each dog to see if their personality traits match with what type of dog the user wants. If the user likes a particular dog they can then click the learn more button to see a more detailed account of the dog’s stats, bio, personality traits, and also if the user wants to set up a meet and greet with the dog. If user’s want to see more of the photos or videos, they are able to do so by clicking on the photos and video option. I also added a section where it tells users that this dog’s profile was saved by other user’s so that the user can see if a particular dog is popular among other potential dog owners.
My hope is that the user will be more inclined to take action instead of having a dog profile saved by seeing that the dog they want might be adopted by someone else. For the meet and greet, I wanted the process to be easy and clickable. Grayed out items are unavailable times and the user can pick and choose with dates and times that work best for their schedule. I hope that users can move seamlessly through the app and like the information provided.
Day 5 Test
Usability Testing
For testing, I selected 5 users for a usability test on the prototype I had. The 5 users were selected by the criteria of if they are savvy browsing the internet and if they had or will be adopting a pet in the future. 3 out of the 5 users have adopted a pet before and 2 out of the 5 wanted to adopt a pet in the near future. All 5 users live in a metropolitan city, 3 live in NYC and 2 live in Philadelphia. All users were in the age range of 27-25 years old.
Objective
The goal of the usability testing was to see if users can seamlessly and intuitively move through 3 main tasks:
Filling out the lifestyle questionnaire
Navigating the dog’s profile
Scheduling a meet and greet
Findings
All users were able to complete the tasks pretty easily. Every user said that the flow of the website was easy to navigate and they were able to figure out how to complete the lifestyle questionnaire and schedule a meet and greet. The main issues that the users ran into was that the lifestyle questionnaire page felt too cramped, and they wanted the confirmation page to have the appointment date of their meet and greet.
I took the findings and made adjustments to my final prototype by using more cards to make the questionnaire page more uniform, and I added the appointment time, date and picture of the dog for the confirmation page.
Final Design
Prototype
Closing Thoughts
I really enjoyed this design sprint challenge. I was surprised to see how much can get done in a span of 5 days. I particularly liked how this design sprint was for a desktop or laptop website instead of a mobile device. Since my capstone one case study was done for a mobile device, I liked how much space there was to utilize for a desktop/laptop website.
The biggest challenge I personally faced with my first design sprint was letting go of perfectionism and learning to enjoy the process. Since time is of the essence for a design sprint, it was difficult for me to let go of the idea that the product, sketches, or UI elements have to be perfect. It was definitely a learning experience that helped me to understand the design process better in terms of designing for a specific solution for the user. The biggest takeaway that the design sprint helped me with was seeing the big picture of how a designer goes from problem to solution. As someone who gets caught up in the little details, the design sprint has helped me to trust the process and it was rewarding to see how I was able to make a minimum viable product in such a short span of time.