Finding Fido

Summer 2017 (Project on pause)

Passion project, Web App, Service design, User research

An app to ease the dog adoption process and match owners to the right dog for them.

This concept for a web app investigates how might we find the perfect match of owner and pet by searching with the pet’s need in mind first and to ease the adoption process for the people working on the other side of the adoption process.

“My personal anecdotes and thoughts will be in quotes and in blue”

Impact and Contributions

In-depth user research with potential adopters and shelter workers and an MVP concept design

During the summer of 2017, I conducted user-research sessions to find the main pain points for potential adopters and shelter workers. Using my findings, I created an MVP concept design for what I think the web app should look like.

“Pet adoption is a very dear subject to my heart and I plan to return to this project and iterate on my findings. Once that happens, I will update this page with a part 2. ”

Problem space

Millions of animals are currently in shelters and foster homes awaiting adoption. However, many are hesitant to adopt an animal because they do not how if the pet will match their lifestyle. On the other hand, shelter workers struggle to meet the constant volume for adoption in high-demand areas.

“When I first started this research, I had only 1 user group: the potential adopters. It was only after user testing round 2 did I realize that I had missed the other crucial player in this adoption process: the animal shelter staff. “

Assumptions for this project

To reduce the complexity of the problem, I assumed that only dogs are up for adoption. Any other types of animal — whether it’s cats, guinea pigs, lizards, turtles — will need adopters to require other specific requirements.

User 1: Potential Adopters

These are humans who are looking to welcome a dog into their home. They will have their own set of restrictions; whether that is time they are able to be at home, whether they have children or a backyard, or if they have limited finances.

User 2: Animal shelter staff

These are humans that care the dogs before they are adopted. They will know the most about the dog’s personalities and needs. They are the ones how fill out the dog’s profile on the adoption website. They are also the people that will schedule potential adopters to meeting the dog and accessing the adopters if they are good fit for the dog.

Research

Methodology

I did a competitive analysis of available apps and websites on pet adoption, conducted surveys via Google surveyed with potential adopters, and interviewed with animal shelter staff to formalize a process flow for pet adoption. I also walked around my neighborhood and did guerilla interviews with people about what they thought the dog adoption process should be like.

“Having never been on the other side of the adoption process, I found my interviews with animal shelter staff my most informative research method. They provided me a perspective that I don’t usually hear about in the dog adoption process.“

Survey and Interview findings

Click on either the survey or interview links to view full results.

• The adoption process hinges on having potential adopters come visit the dog at the shelter or adoption event

• Animal shelter staff recommended that the only factor that matters is how much time and attention can you spare for your dog. 

• Animal shelter staff say time is mostly spent on writing blurbs on the dog’s personality and needs

Competitive Analysis findings

Click here to view competitive analysis. 

• Filter has too much emphasis on superficial characteristics, such as breed and appearance, leading people to adopt based on appearance

• Pet matching websites are flawed dating apps. Little to no effort in making sure that dogs have a say in what they require. 

• Most websites are based on wants of humans and not the needs of dog

Summary

Through my research, I have discovered that there is a large disparity between what the owner can offer and what the dog needs. This lack of want the dog leads to unhappy human-dog relationships and returned dogs to shelters. Present apps are similar to dating apps that only take what the human owner might want into consideration. Going forward, I wanted to focus on a search experience be shaped from the dog's point of view instead.

“Each dog is an individual - they may be of the same breed but each dog has different personalities and needs”

— Lollypop Farm Representative

Information Architecture

Goal Setting

Based on the interviews, the main goal of the solution is to get potential adopters to visit the dog at the animal shelter or event.

Tasks

• Create a space that puts humans and dogs are equal searching ground

• Match humans to needs of specific dogs

• Create a seamless appointment-making experience for the human so they can focus on getting to know their dog

• Accomplish all of this from the dog's perspective

Constraints

• There already exist websites that combine all adoptable dogs in the area, how will this experience be any different?

• Animal Shelter already lists adoptable dogs on their website, how can we use this to our advantage?

“Meeting the dog is the most crucial step in any adoption process as this is where the potential adopter and dog can test out their rapport and personalities.”

Above: Low fidelity paper prototypes

Low fidelity prototypes

Sketches

Next, I sketched out designs for my interfaces into my notebook to generate some ideas about how to implement this experience. For this design, I found inspiration from AirBnB and Pinterest. 

“I looked on AirBnB and Pinterest because they have a large set of picture data that users can filter through easily. I didn’t consider Instagram because it’s more meant to browse. I also looked at current pet adoption websites like Petfinder.”

Paper prototype

Now that I had a better understanding of the people involved in the process and the process itself, I started the prototyping stage with paper prototypes. The goal of this prototype is to be able to conduct usability and navigation testing. 

“I created the prototypes on Tabloid size sheets of paper that I carried around to test with people I knew and people I asked for 10 minutes off the street”

User Testing Round 1

Methodology

To verify the usability of my designs, I arranged to meet with people I knew and I blocked off an afternoon and conducted guerilla testing around my neighborhood. In total, I interviewed 12 people. Testing was structured as an unguided navigational test, I would ask them to do a task and observe their process. 

“It turns out asking “Do you like dogs?” is a great way to get people interested in doing an interview about dog adoption. I had a 100% success rate that afternoon when I walked around asking people to interview.“

Sample Findings

Insight from Google maps prototype

• Users responded positively to the brief adoptable animal view on the maps view for a specific animal shelter.

• Users were not able to find the button at the top to direct them to the pet search page. 

• Upon observation, the users considered the adoptable animal view as ads.

• Both maps options will be scrapped because it did not do well in testing. 

Insight from dog profile and action from appointment maker

• Users were able to navigate both pages

• Users noted that the scheduler had too many options and that they are most likely to come on the weekends

• Users loved the staff comments. There was also a comment on how they recognize that dogs are not perfect and that they want to know upfront what the dog's problems are. They would also prefer to hear about temperament from staff members.

• They found the cost estimator very helpful when it comes to deciding which dog they would get. 

“One thing people mentioned was that they sometimes underestimate how much it can cost to adopt a dog. They will only think about things in the next couple of years and not consider the cost when the dog is old.”

Test Summary

• Most of the designs did well. However, ones that were integrated onto Google apps, such a search or maps, did not do well as users considered them to be ads and potentially untruthful.

• People didn't seem to notice that the search experience was coming from the dog's point of view. Change of perspective does not affect search experience.

• When dog breed is not a choice, users didn't list it as something that was important when asked to follow up question about important adoption factors.

“People are dishonest on Tinder and that’s normal. I would be more upset if I realized I fell in love with a dog based on a lie.”

— Travis, guy who worked at the library

Above: Sample designs created for mid-fidelity prototypes

User testing round 2

The people I interviewed were 2 software developers. I wanted some engineering perspective for the potential of the project. 

“If I had more time, I would redo this section and conduct more tests on a wider range of people.”

Key takeaways

I had assumed that making this website automatically generating by scraping from existing animal shelter websites would be pretty easy. The engineers disagreed and explained to me the difficulties of it: different information structures, information verification, and etc. Then one of them asked the killer question:

"So who is going to be entering all this data?"

That's when I realized I had missed designing for entire whole group: the animal shelter staff members.

Final thoughts - for now

Next steps

• Add a sort so that you can view dogs by age and adoption urgency

• Research more about the animal shelter staff's role in the adoption process

• Design the process flow for the animal shelter staff

“The project is currently on pause, but I plan to return to it and further improve this idea for my personal interest.”