Design Challenge, Product Design

Designing a better pet adoption experience

Overview

The focus to design an onboarding experience that will help connect people looking for a new pet with the right companion.

Details

I had one week to work on this challenge as part of the interview process for a client. The task was to showcase my design process and provide 1-2 final UI screens.

Problem statement

Millions of animals are currently in shelters and foster homes awaiting adoption. How can we create an onboarding experience to help connect people who are looking for a new pet with the right companion?

My approach

1 User Discovery

  • Problem statement

  • User personas

  • User journey map

  • High-level user flow

2 Design Research

  • Competitive research

3 Design Concepts

  • Sketches

  • High-Fidelity Designs

  • Learnings

User Personas

For the user personas, I focused on three large groups first, including First-time pet owners, Current pet owners, and Prior pet owners. These would be the three general buckets of users I was considering.

To narrow down these personas a little, I focused on some specifics that could apply to any of the users. For example either a new, current, or prior pet owner might have a family with kids, or have allergies.

Lastly, I focused on one specific user who I thought would find the app most helpful. I focused on a young first-time pet owner, someone I could relate to as well.

User Journey Considerations

When?

Overall, people are usually doing this research in their free time, since it’s not likely not urgent that someone wants to gets a pet.

Seasonal timing
- Holidays
- Summer breaks
- Puppy/kitten season in 
the spring

Life transitions
- Seniors seeking companions during retirement
- Young professionals moving to their first home
- Couples looking for a pet to take care of together
- Empty nesters


Special needs
-Therapy or service animals (short term, or 
long term needs)

Focusing on when means focusing on urgency and life circumstances. Can we take time finding a new pet, or is this more of an immediate need?

Where?

Physical locations
- At home during the evenings and weekends
- At pet stores or visiting a local shelter, local 
adoption events
- During commutes on public transportation
- While they’re out and about (at a restaurant, bar, coffee shop)
- Waiting in line or at a location
- At a park observing other’s pets

Devices
- Desktop/laptop while at home for in-depth research
- Mobile phones or tablets while on-the-go
- Could be using a mix of devices throughout the journey

Online resources
- Pet adoption websites and apps
- Social media, Facebook marketplace, NextDoor
- Online forums dedicated to certain pet breeds

Focusing on where means focusing on the locations people are accessing this information, what tools are they using, and how can this inform our approach for our product?

Competitive Research

For competitive research, I looked at direct competitors including other pet finding websites such as Petfinder, Adopt-a-Pet, and Wagtopia. Petfinder was the only one that also had an app. Then, I shifted focus on best-in-class indirect competitors who were doing onboarding really well.

High-level user flow

Once I understood the user journey and the user persona’s behavior, I started thinking through a high-level user flow for a first-time onboarding experience. The flow I highlighted was for a first-time pet owner looking for a dog.

Sketches

My ideas for sketches were to use dynamic, visual and different types of questions to make the onboarding process fun and interactive.

Maybe we could have an Ai form field where the user can type in any additional preferences, that Ai can then use to match based on pet descriptions.

(Ex. I’m looking for a friendly lap dog that is house trained, low maintenance.)

High-fidelity designs

I annotated each of the high-fidelity designs to showcase some of the key features and components.

Learnings

This project excited me because it was a topic so close to my heart, pets and animal adoption. It also was a subject matter that could be approached in a fun and playful way. I wanted to design an app that felt friendly, provided joy through the look, feel and illustrations, and made users excited rather than anxious about finding a pet.