Case Study : Pets Adoption Apps

This is my first 1 week design project organized by iXDA Malang
the research was conducted on may 1st, 2020.

Introduction

Millions of animals are currently in shelters and foster homes awaiting adoption. Design an experience that will help connect people looking for a new pet with the right companion for them. Help an adopter find a pet which matches their lifestyle, considering factors including breed, gender, age, temperament, and health status.

Discover the Problems

I began with brainstorming to find the topics related to adoption
and branched out to 3 key ideas: propose, planning, and adoption behavior.

Here are the questions that give me first-hand information about users’ motivation, perceptions, and opinions of their adoption experience.

User Persona

I classify prospective users related to animal adoption.

• User who will adopt the animal
• User who will put their animal to animal shelter
• the animal shelter

Based on the three users who are likely to need this application, I will focus to the “user who wants to adopt animals “ first. Iterations for other users can be done in the next iterations

Defining the problem and solutions

Because the focus user of this study case is user who will adopt the animal. the subject of interview that will be held is people who adopted pets. Here the following questions :

1. Why would you want to adopt a pet, And where are you willing to adopt animals?
2. What is the first thing you do when you want to adopt animals?
3. If you don’t adopt animals from animal shelters, explain why?
4. Do you know the location of animal shelters in your area?
5. What challenges do you experience when you want to adopt animals?
6. What problems are you experiencing when you want to adopt a pet?
7. How long does it take you to find the right place to adopt?

On the pandemic, i did the interview by using online form. But the answers I got were quite generic so i have to grouping down to find the problems that I wanted to focus on.

grouping the insights

With all information that i got, i grouping them based on similarity. I ended up with 3 groups that lead me to a problem where information is the concern.

Problem :

An adopter requires nearby shelter information and animal information to make it easier and safer to adopt animals. Shelters are also easier to distribute their animals

Solutions :

to make mobile apps that allows adopter to adopt animal based on location and preferences of animal that they want

Why the solutions is mobile apps?

1. it’s hand on. all users can simply download in from the apps store / google play
2. easy to direct us to the maps to find nearby animal shelter

Developing The Idea

Based on the solutions, here the main features that will be develope on apps

• User can immediately find the nearest shelter and desired animal by filling the address
• User can directly contact and get information about the destination shelter
• User get detailed information about desired animal and care tips

User Flow

Before jumping into screen design, I created a User Flow to help me visualise the processes users need to go through when they use the app.

Results

Firstly, I did some paper sketches to see how the screens will look like and how to layout the information before transforming it into a mid-fi for better visualisation.

wireframe

after that, i start to make the high resolutions of mockups by using figma. To make user more interested using this application, I made the brand and define the color and typography.

Brand, colors and typography

brand and typography

finally, here the final mockups

From the final mockup that has been created above, i also made the prototype using figma and connect it to maze.design to do user testing.

User Testing

I held user testing by using maze.design by sharing a link to a friend. Before that, i changed the language to Bahasa to make user easier to understand the app. After the testing, I asked a private chat about impressions using this app. So, here the result.

I tested the prototype to 15 users. The usability score that i got is 68, it means that most of user already able use the system according to the command but needs improvement on make it better. Here the breakdown of every blocks.

1. user needs to login and choose their current city

on this blocks, misclick is high. On the login page and walktrough page, most of user looks taps on the entire screen and not directly towards the button. On the city option page, user has started to focus on the city.

feedback : on this task, user is still confused with the command. Because this test is not done directly with the user and i didn’t unaccompanied them, the user does not realize that there is a command at the beginning.

2. user needs search Pets by category cats and filters by color

on the 2nd blocks, misclick rate still high. But, on the homepage, most of users has been direct to the icon of cat as the command that means user has been notice that to find cat on there. On the animal list page, most of users has been directly find filter menu and filter the cat as requested. But, some users still clicks the entire of screen.

feedback : 2 of users gives up because of technical issue. User still didn’t notice the command and confused.

3. back to homepage

Misclicks starts to decrease. All of users understand the command and could find the back button easly.

4. Find a cat animal at the nearest shelter and find out the location

All of users understand on swipe right behaviour when they need to find the nearby shelter list and could find the maps icon directly when they need to see the maps of its shelter.

5. give a like to a cats and see detail information

misclicks rate getting small, most of users already understand the app and could follow the command.

6. chat the shelter owner

Great! all of user able to understand how to chat the shelter owner easily.

Reflection

• Users has been understand well how to use the apps but we need to do more improvement on padding
• Reviewers find that some icon that used is not understandable the meaning. For example, in detail of animal page i changed icon of birth and colors.
• On the user testing, we need to accompany tester and give them a little directions
• on the next iteration, apps need to support shelter owner, and user who want to give their animal
• Need to do more iteration on interview, ideation and creating mockups.