CityPups
A design sprint aiming to improve the dog adoption process for city residents.
Overview
CityPups is a dog adoption site that simplifies the dog adoption process for city residents.
Problem Statement
City residents' often struggle to find the right dog to adopt because current dog adoption sites fail to consider issues in the adoption process that are specific to city residents. This can lead to potential adopters living in cities having to spend obsessive amounts of time searching for the right dog and contacting shelters to get answers to basic questions about the dog's suitability for living in a city.
Project Scope
This project was a design sprint that brainstormed and tested one way of improving how city residents looking to adopt find their perfect dog. The end result was a high fidelity interactive prototype designed on Marvel that was used to test one possible solution for city residents' issues adopting a dog.
Roles and Responsibilities
I served as the UX/UI designer. This included researching competitors, designing a high fidelity interactive prototype, and conducting usability testing.
Defining the User
Previous research showed that CityPups' users are city residents who often live in apartments with dog restrictions, have no yard but access to a busy park with lot's of dogs, and sometimes have no car. CityPups aims to take these things into account when simplifying their users' adoption process.
Competitors Research
A review was completed of four competitor sites: Petfinder, Adopt A Pet, Philly Paws, and the SPCA.
This competitor research revealed that while most adoption sites will allow users' to filter dog profiles by some basic characteristics, like age, they do not allow users to filter by issues that are important to city residents, such as a dog's comfort level with walking in a chaotic area.
Additionally, the dogs' bios typically do not cover information about the dogs' suitability for living in the city which means potential adopters have to contact a shelter to learn this basic information.
Petfinder came the closest to being helpful for city residents, by providing users with a dog match quiz to help them find dogs that seem like a good match for them. However, the quiz didn't cover questions that are important to city residents, such as whether each dog was good at interacting with strange people and dogs on walks. Also, the dog match results seemed to ignore deal breakers, such as a breed that an adopter's apartment won't allow, and instead give results that just met some of the characteristics the user requested.
Brainstorming and Mapping Solutions
Several solutions to city residents' problems adopting a dog were brainstormed. These possible solutions included requiring shelters to provide more city specific information about their dogs, allowing users to filter dog results by issues important to city residents, and providing email templates that potential adopters could use to easily compose an email asking shelters for more information about a dog.
A map of a possible user experience including these solutions was made. Since this is a design sprint, the rest of the project then focused on testing the most critical part of this experience. Because users' expressed an interest in being able to find their perfect dog without sorting through dozens of unsuitable dogs or contacting the shelter for more information, the filtering dog results step was deemed the most critical. The idea of a dog match quiz which came up in competitor research was used to simplify this filtering process. CityPups aimed to go beyond its competitor's dog match quiz by including questions specific to city residents looking to adopt.
Crazy Eights Exercise
A crazy eights exercise was performed on CityPups' dog match quiz page. This exercise involved quickly sketching eight versions of the page. This allowed different ideas for the page to be quickly considered and for the best version to be selected before moving on to more in-depth work on the dog match quiz. This exercise led to a decision being made about the best format for the quiz questions.
Solution Sketch
A solution sketch was drawn showing the dog match quiz screen and the screen before and after the quiz. This solution sketch visualized how users would get to the dog match quiz and how they would move away from the quiz. Visualizing how users would move from one screen to the next helped ensure that users would be able to easily navigate to and from the dog match quiz.
Storyboard
A storyboard was created which fully depicts CityPups’ dog matching process. This storyboard allowed the full user experience to be considered and for details to be worked out in a fast format. This included deciding which questions should be used to best match users with their perfect dog. Issues brought up by research participants helped guide the decision of which questions to include.
Low Fidelity Prototype
A low fidelity prototype was created using Marvel. This prototype shows the basic website and allows users to interact with aspects of the site relevant to the dog match quiz. While the prototype is too simple to actually match users with a dog, it allows the dog match quiz process to be tested on users. This means feedback on the quiz process and questions can be gained and it can be determined if this dog match quiz idea is worth pursuing beyond this quick design sprint.
Usability Testing
Usability testing was performed on five participants. Three of these tests were performed remotely over skype while two were performed in person.
Usability testing aimed to learn if users felt CityPups’ dog match quiz asks the questions that are important to them and if the quiz is easy to navigate.
Feedback from usability testing was largely positive. Participants felt the quiz covered all the really important questions. They also appreciated having the option to further filter dog results by personal preferences, such as age, after the quiz narrowed down the results to dogs that would be a good fit for their city lifestyle.
Participants had a few small suggestions, such as adding coat length as a filter option and clarifying that the quiz question about whether the adopter has kids only applies to kids living in the household.
Check out the prototype above or click to view in a new window:
High Fidelity Prototype
Small improvements were made to CityPups in order to address the suggestions made by participants during usability testing and to turn CityPups into a polished high fidelity interactive prototype.
What's Next
For now, having gotten positive feedback from this design sprint, the project is complete. There are, however, some possible areas for a future CityPups project.
1. A full scale high fidelity interactive prototype of CityPups could be made which allows users to interact with the whole website. Also, additional ideas that were brainstormed during this project, such as email templates to simplify adopters' process of contacting shelters, could be tested.
2. The dog match quiz results could be further improved by making adjustments to how the strength of matches are displayed. Right now, perfect matches are indicated by a green boarder whereas potential matches, such as a puppy who would be a great match with a little training, are indicated by a yellow boarder. Different ways of demonstrating the strength of a match could be testing in a/b user test to see if another indicator works better.
These possible subjects for future projects offer opportunities to further expand on CityPups. In the meantime, this successful design sprint has proved that a dog match quiz is a valuable addition to CityPups efforts to simplify the dog adoption process for city residents.