Pet Re - Adopt
App Project
Pet Re-Adopt is an app revolutionizing pet adoption in South Africa.
Roles: UI Designer, UX Designer
Methods: Interviews, Wireframes, Prototype
Tools: Adobe XD
Goals
Company Goal / Overall Objective:
Connect those looking to rehome their pets with compassionate individuals and families seeking a furry companion
Project Goal:
To create a platform where users can upload information and images of their pets for pet adopters to view
Backstory
3. show final product
My grandmother had adopted a dog called Wei Yee a few years back. When the pandemic hit, unfortunately her living situation changed and she was no longer in the position to care for her dog.
Possible solutions :
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Animal shelter - shelters are often operating at full capacity and there is a risk of no one wanting to adopt her and she’d probably be put down
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Ask family/friends if they would be willing to take on the responsibility
Research
Adoption
Rate
Animals
put in
shelters
Facebook adverts
calling for
adoptions
Adoption
Rate
The harsh reality is that these are not effective.
There are animal shelters available, however the adoption rate is much lower than the amount of animals needing homes.
An alternative to animal shelters are Facebook groups.
Members post “adverts” trying to find a new home for their pet. There were hundreds of posts like these but there's no catalogue system and posts get lost amongst all the other posts.
(Source: Facebook)
Interviews with Pet Owners
6
Participants
6
Participants
12
Questions
Key Takeaways:
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Who is the best person to take care of their pet?
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It's comforting to know who their pet was going to
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Pet shelter is the last resort and the shelter must have a ‘no kill policy’
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Feelings of guilt and concern for their pet’s mental well-being
Decision
Having user's pets go on "dates" with their potential adoptees to find out if there was a match would also be able to address user's concerns. After some research, I found the tinder formula quite popular overseas (mechanism of swiping left and right on a profile) and many pet adoption apps had this feature. I was inspired to do a version of this, specifically within the South African context.
Focus on who their pet was going to be adopted by was of high importance to users. This will in turn aleviate many of their other concerns.
Scoping Out The Competition
Gaps in the market
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How do users find out the personality of the pet?
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What about other exotic pets that are not listed? (eg.rabbits)
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Users need to contact the shelter by phoning/emailing them - an extra step in the process
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The pet data needs to constantly be updated and maintained by someone at the shelter
(this process can be time consuming)
User Flow
Sketch
Final Designs
I’ve opted to go with an autocomplete field instead. The goal is to assist users with the spelling of dog breeds that they are unsure of. An autocomplete field is also beneficial as it doesn't take up as much screen space, thus helping to speed up the process of inputting data.
I used radio buttons and tried to limit options so as not to overwhelm users.
The options are presented as radio buttons and some of the questions have an in-between option.
This will allow those, wanting to adopt pets, an option to filter their searches. It also gives users, who are giving their pets up for adoption, a simple and clearly laid out form to fill in.
Success?
Due to the nature of this project being a passion project, these are the metrics I would set up to measure its success:
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Gather data on successful and unsuccessful pet re-homing matches
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In both cases, why was it a success and why was it unsuccessful?
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Ease of creating a pet profile - to be measured by support tickets and incomplete/ abandoned profiles
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Assess number of re-homing matches versus pet profiles
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Assess if there are any cases whereby a match wants to give the pet up to be re-adopted
Reflections
Upon conception, the idea for this application didn't seem too difficult to execute. However, shortly after I started, I realised that I couldn't have been more incorrect. Working on this project gave me many challenges and obstacles to think about. These include:
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The order of the questions
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Which questions to prioritize
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How to make sure that users don't ditch the onboarding process
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If users do ditch the onboarding process, why would they do that
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How to make it less likely that a user will skip the onboarding process? Maybe it could be adding a 'skip for now' button?
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These questions made me reflect on the user journey of this application and what the best approach was/is.
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I know that I'll need to ask more users to test for feedback and to continuously work on this to build it up and to refine it