Find your canine soulmate.
About The Project
CityPups is a pet curation website solution that focuses on creating a smooth and effortless experience for people living in densely populated locations, looking to adopt a new dog. The solution was developed over the period of one week and the design process followed a modified version of the Google Ventures Design Sprint methodology.
The Problem
It is difficult and often time consuming for people to find a dog to adopt that matches their personality and living conditions. This is especially true for people living in densely populated cities because the living conditions are far more restrictive. People are afraid to adopt a dog that wouldn’t fit their lifestyle and personality.
People are also just as concerned about the dog’s well being, since the dog may require different living conditions, like in the case of people living in apartments. The dog may require far more than 500 square feet, for example. Also of notable concern is the dog’s behavior in high stimulus situations in large cities. People need to know how the dog would behave when in very close proximity with many other animals and other residents.
Sad pup to illustrate ‘I haz sad sitchooation’.
The Solution
CityPups is a website that helps people efficiently and confidently find a dog that they can adopt by providing a simple profile builder and filtering feature, enabling them to browse dogs that match their preferences and needs. Later features would include information on specific breeds people are curious about and how well that breed would likely match their requirements in terms of personality and living conditions.
Roles / Responsibilities / Tools
My role was that of the UI and UX designer. Responsibilities included: research synthesis, sketching, storyboarding, prototyping, user testing. The tools used were Figma, Photoshop, and various google applications.
Design Sprint
A 5 day design sprint was conducted in order to build an MVP to test the functionality and efficacy of the design solution.
Design Sprint Process
Day 1 - Understand
Based on the existing user data provided by the client, a mind map was created to show a possible end-to-end experience that a user might have. This experience was tailored towards the user types and personas realized by the client.
Example Persona
Ellie
27 year old female living in New York
Lives alone and follows some adoption agencies on social media, but finds talking to some agencies frustrating because it’s hard to find the right person to talk to in the first place.
Key Frustrations
Not 100% confident that adopting a dog will be a good fit for her AND the dog.
Says sites currently focus on making that connection between a dog and people, but because of a lack of any kind of tailored experience, she finds that she ‘falls in love’ with dogs that actually require more space or activity, than what she can actually provide.
Dog descriptions are too general, they do not have specifics on HOW much space the dog may actually need, as an example.
Key Goals
Wants to find a dog that she feels 100% confident in adopting, because it will be a good match in terms of personality, lifestyle and emotional connection.
Mind Map (User Flow)
I decided to pick the most important flow that demonstrates the ideal user flow throughout the website. This addresses the key frustrations and goals that a user has.
Day 2 - Sketches
“Crazy 8s”
Next was a process called “Crazy 8s”. Eight different variations of the most critical screen for my solution were quickly sketched up, with the existing solutions in mind as inspiration
The core part of the experience was really about being able to ‘tell’ the system about your needs so that it could create a tailored list of dogs. Not really possible to show in one screen, but the screen most important to the overall experience would be the ‘dog profile’ screen, where a user reads all the details, about the dog that was matched up accordingly, and is able to start the adoption process from there.
Solution Sketch
To show the process of ‘searching’ for a dog a little better, a solution sketch was drawn up. A three-panel board of this critical process explains how a user goes from looking at the tailored list of dogs, and choosing a potential dog to look at their detailed profile, then finally clicking the button to start the adoption process with a simple inquiry form.
Day 3 - Storyboarding
The third day involved expanding upon the solutions sketches. A simple 6-panel storyboard was created to demonstrate a user’s journey from landing on the homepage, to adding some personal details to filtering the search, then to clicking on a desired dog profile, and finally starting the adoption process by filling out an inquiry form.
Day 4 - Prototyping
Day 4 involved the creation of an interactive prototype that incorporates all the steps and interactions a user would take in order to complete their goal of finding the perfect compatible dog to adopt.
Day 5 - Testing
Usability testing involved the recruitment of 5 participants. These participants were given a scenario and a goal to complete with the given scenario in mind. Usability test sessions were all conducted via Zoom and Google Meet. 3 users were randomly recruited, and 2 users were specifically chosen because of their known affinity for dogs, and their previous experience with adoption.
Scenario
“You are a dog lover looking to adopt a new dog. You want to find a dog that is compatible with your living space - a 1000 sqft apartment, your very active lifestyle, and you want to find a dog that is within 5km of your home.
The dog needs to be relatively small and good with other dogs.
Task
Given your scenario and your preference for this certain type of dog, look for one that matches these requirements, and see if you can inquire about adopting it.
Findings
All participants were able to successfully complete the task without encountering any major obstacles. Some minor issues were however encountered:
The ‘add’ detail button turns grey to indicate it is no longer applicable. Some people thought this was to indicate something is missing or something is wrong.
After adding personal details, they weren’t sure what the next ‘step’ was.
In the filter section, the ‘behavior’ drop down was thought to contain the ‘good with children’ filter, instead of the “good with” drop down. Here, the titling was thought to be a little unusual.
Design Updates
The ‘add detail’ button was removed, when it became no longer relevant (no more details left to add).
Notices were added that let the user know what they could do next to continue the search journey.
The ‘behavior’ drop down was changed to ‘Energy Level’.
Final Thoughts & Wisdom Gained
The design sprint was an overall enlightening and fun experience. I appreciated the speed and efficiency of the whole process. I was able to understand the problem, synthesize the user research provided by the ‘client’, and design a solution that went through user testing, all within a week’s time.