Project Overview
As students of the SMU UX Design Certificate program, we were tasked with developing the mission and design of a mobile app from inception to prototype. We presented our app to our instructors to showcase what we have learned and practice presenting to potential investors.
Our Mission
We want to provide a way for prospective pet owners find their perfect pet and be prepared bring a life-long companion home in a fun and engaging way.
Our Product
We have designed an app that -
Provides recommendations on specific breeds of pets that align with the user’s lifestyle, activity levels, home environment, personality, and budget, and other preferences.
Allows users to create a virtual pet that they can interact with on a daily basis to better understand all the responsibilities and commitment aspects of introducing a new companion into their lives.
Our Competitive Advantages
Our matching process is designed from a holistic set of criteria that accounts for the realistic aspects of pet ownership beyond just superficial preferences of pet owners. Additionally, interaction with a virtual pet on a daily basis gives our users an accurate representation of recurring responsibilities and time commitments, allowing them to experience the joys in companionship and the disruptions of their everyday patterns. Our objective is that after our users complete their virtual experience, they are indeed fully prepared and ready to bring a new pet home.
Our Journey
Problem Definition
The start of every great journey is the beginning – what should we focus on? Quickly we all realized we were animal lovers and decided we wanted to develop an app that focused on that.
Our initial research was heartbreaking – about 1.5 million shelter pets are euthanized each year. Factors such as problematic behaviors, growing too big, and health problems all contributed to animals being taken to shelters that ultimately were euthanized (ASPCA).
With these statistics, we decided to focus on working with shelters in order to increase adoptability of animals. After interviewing eight shelters in the area we found that adoption rates were actually very high – as much as 90% for some!
However, we did find an opportunity – as high as 10% of animals adopted in the shelters were returned. Many times the return was because the pet was not a good match – people underestimated the care a puppy would need, the dog grew too big, ETC.
With this new information, we decided to develop an app that would match future pet owners with pets and reveal the realities of pet ownership to ensure new pet owners got it right the first time.
Design
Workflows
With our workflows, we first decided how many users we would have and the different paths for each. Through our workflows, we analyzed the paths for gaps and overlaps and worked to understand all the complexities in our user’s journeys.
After many revisions, we ended up with two main user paths – new user and returning user. We were now ready to start designing.
Sketches
Each member of the team worked individually to sketch a different part of the workflow to get a general feel for what we wanted our users to experience. We brought our sketches for critique sessions, aligned them with the workflow, and made revisions. We went through this process several times as we refined what we wanted the look and feel of our app to be.
During our sketch and critique sessions, we discussed things such as:
What is the primary, secondary and tertiary information we want our users to interact with?
How can we lay things out in a way that makes the most sense to users?
What information needs to be displayed and what information can go in a hamburger menu?
What should our on-boarding process look like?
How much information/how many questions are too many (cognitive load)?
One of the unique challenges to the app was the AR interactions. I decided to volunteer to take on the design of the AR interactions because I have passion for it and wanted to challenge myself. Using this article from Prototypr, I began to script out what I thought I wanted to AR interactions to look like. My team and I critiqued and discussed the interactions, further refining them as the project went out.
Once we felt 80% confident with our sketches and how the interactions worked, we went into Adobe XD to create wireframes that would eventually become our prototype.
With our wireframes, we further expanded interactions and how user paths would flow. Through critique sessions, we refined our user paths and validated them with our workflows.
Once our user paths were validated, we began to discuss how we wanted the app to look and what we wanted it to convey. We decided we wanted a fun and happy app that was inviting to both children and adults. With that in mind, we chose warm, gender neutral colors, with a simple and easy to follow interface.
Wireframes
With our wireframes, we further expanded interactions and how user paths would flow. Through critique sessions, we refined our user paths and validated them with our workflows.
Once our user paths were validated, we began to discuss how we wanted the app to look and what we wanted it to convey. We decided we wanted a fun and happy app that was inviting to both children and adults. With that in mind, we chose warm, gender neutral colors, with a simple and easy to follow interface.
Early V1 Wireframes|Low Resolution V2 Wireframes|AR Play Wireframe V1|AR Clean Up Wireframe V1|AR Feed Your Pet V1
Prototype
The final step in our design process was to create a working prototype. In our prototype, we wanted users to be able to try out the assessment process, customize their pet, and perform basic AR mapping that would allow them to interact with their virtual pet.
Please note that the prototype above has already been updated with findings from our usability testing :)
Usability Testing
Testing Our Users
With our prototype finished, we were ready to validate our assumptions with users. On a stormy Sunday afternoon, we interviewed five users at Community Beer Company. Community Beer was a great partner who was pet friendly and allowed us to interview our users where they like to relax and play. We used a mixture of testing methods including tasks, open-ended questions, and a walk-through of the prototype.
We found our users like that they could customize their pet, the AR components, and that the content was valuable in trying to choose a pet. Many users really enjoyed the concept and saw a lot of potential for growth of the app.
The most important actionable finding was the lack of ‘call to action” buttons leading to confusion on what was clickable and how to navigate the app. Originally we had our app scroll for users to get through information. All five of the users tested said they prefer a progress bar and buttons to go through the information for the app. We updated the prototype to reflect these changes.
Another finding was that our hierarchy and navigation in the UI was not clear. Many users did not know exactly where to click or what was clickable. We changed our UI, the colors of our buttons, and the size of many buttons in order to fix this concern.
Next Steps
Now that we have validated our app with our users, we are ready to begin the next stages of our app to make it the one stop for pet ownership from start to finish. Our first phase is partnering with local animal shelters to create a system where users can adopt a real life version of the AR part if they find it aligns with their lifestyle.
Phase Two would involve obtaining more community partners to create a pet-owner community with a database of pet sitters, veterinarians, training resources, and other tools to help pet owners be successful.
Project Presentation
On Tuesday, June 18, 2019, Team EmPEThy presented our project, process, and findings to our instructors at SMU in order to finish our class. Below is a copy of the Powerpoint we used (with updates from instructor feedback) and a video of the presentation.