User Journey Map

Bitesize UX was kind enough to provide some research for me to analyze as part of this project. Based on the user interviews, I found some important insights

Quantitative Research

40% Wanted dogs that were behaved around people/in crowds
40% Alluded to the importance of having specific information on the dog availbale upfront
20% Place some level of importance on photos being available

User Persona

Description
Ellie lives alone in a studio in NYC. She’s ready to take the plunge and adopt a dog, and she needs a tool that will help connect her with the best pup for her.

Steps Taken
Follows some agencies on Instagram
Spoken to Agency Reps (found them helpful but time consuming)
Asked friends & neighbors for advice

Pain points
She is able to find dogs, but she’s often disappointed by the lack of clear logistics on them
She’s not confident in taking next steps

Name: Ellie

Age: 27

Residence: New York City

Gender: Female

Status: Single/No Roommates

Mock User Test Observations

• The ability to not only see the dog but meet the dog is important

• The dog’s profile should have all relevant info attached (age, medical information, etc.)

• Profiles with videos are ad an advantage because they show the dog’s personality

• Users should be able to get as much insight as possible on the dog’s personality from their profile as possible before making the commitment to inquire

Competitor Analysis

PuppySpot
”America’s leading puppy adoption service”
Features:
1. a breed match quiz that gamefies the experience
2. lacks info on the actual location of the dog (presumably for the breeder’s privacy)

petfinder
provides adoption services for dogs, cats, and other animals
Features:
1. inconsistency with the amount of info on animals’ profiles
2. info on energy levels only available if you click on their breed and go to the breed’s info page

Adopt a Pet
A search for adoptable pets from shelters, rescues, and individuals
Features:
distance radius may be too wide for cities
Some dogs lack important info on their personality, making it less likely for users to want to adopt them

Conducting a rapid-fire exercises to come up with solutions based on yesterday’s research

A gallery of images with a sidebar for search filters

Users take a quiz to hone their search results

Search results with the criteria listed across the bottom

Users can swipe through potential dogs to adopt (think Tinder)

Search filters in the form of slider bars

Users find dogs on a map (think Zillow)

Users filter their pet preferences via a fun diagram

Users would create a profile and basically advertise themselves to shelters

Doing this exercise helped me come up with some ideas for how the website should look. Some ideas are very out of the box and unclear, while others are commonly used and known to be successful. Based on competitors’ layouts, I decided to to forward with designs that were the most reliable.

I wanted my storyboards to show how the user would get from the home page to the seatch results (the dogs). Some panels illustrate how the prototype would utilize dropdowns in order to select certain options. The user flow was kept intentionally simple and followed similar websites: a search for dogs in a certain region with the option to add filters for specific results.