City Pups
Every time a shelter dog gets adopted, an angel gets their wings (…or whatever it is ZuZu Bailey says in It’s a Wonderful Life to get the waterworks going). I volunteered at a rural animal shelter for years as a dog socializer and handler, often lamenting that truly amazing dogs were there far too long - so this project was especially important to me. This project was a modified GV Design Sprint completed as part of my Springboard UX design program.
The problem
It can be challenging to find forever homes for shelter dogs - it’s even harder for city dwellers because of the inherent issues of smaller living spaces, less outdoor space, transportation to and scheduling with a shelter, and other city-specific criteria.
The solution
This was a design sprint project for a desktop website, giving me a great opportunity to test out some innovative ideas for how to rethink dog adoption, including a shift from thinking of it as a transaction to thinking of it as a love connection.
My role
I was responsible for all elements of the design sprint, including an affinity map, lightning demos, crazy 8s, solution sketch, storyboarding, prototyping, and testing.
Tools used
Sketch, InVision, Pen / Paper
Goals for this sprint
Increase adoption rate in shelters by providing better information to adopters
Work with the inherent challenges of city dwellers who want to have a pet
Transform pet adoption from a transactional interaction to a love connection
Affinity map
Based on the existing research and interviews provided at the start of the sprint, I gathered all the relevant information and sorted it into categories for use in design decisions down the road.
Redefining the problem
How might we increase the adoption rate for shelters in metropolitan areas by making adoption fun?
How might we ensure better matches and fewer rescue fails (where an owner brings a dog back to the shelter)?
How might we provide better information to ensure dogs have better forever homes?
Project Map
I started by mapping out the various data points for both adopters and dogs. When it comes to the user map, there were a few different ways the overall process could go.
Having users enter their information and matching it to information about each dog (provided by the shelter) ensures that both sides are finding a good match
More along the lines of a dating site, having the user “pass” or “like” dogs who meet the criteria from their profile, ultimately matching with dogs they’re interested in and contacting the shelter
Similar to the typical process on most pet adoption sites, without a user building a profile - more simply, they browse relying on filters of information entered by the shelter
Lightning demos
When I think of finding the right pet, I think along the lines of sites centered around shopping or dating - there IS a fee associated, but it’s much more enticing to think of your pet as a loved one than your latest purchase.
The #1 aggregator of pets available for adoption is Petfinder. They have a lot of great options, like adding a pet to your favorites, contacting the shelter directly about a pet, and searching by various filters such as breed (assumed), size, age, etc. However, many of the filters are not suited for city life:
The search radius is limited to 10 miles at a minimum. In a city, that is obviously far too long to walk or get to via transit, so many results turn out to be too far from the adopter.
There is no filter for the home size of the adopter. In a city especially, home sizes are limited, but animal size is not always correlated to home size - some larger dogs are more laid back and don’t need a lot of space, and some smaller dogs are more hyper and need more space.
There is a filter for temperament with other animals in the house, but not for interactions with strange dogs or people - this is a common occurrence on busy city streets, and a big concern for city dwellers.
When you think about it, job searching is similar to dating - you’re looking for a good match for both you and the company. Similarly, finding a good companion for you and a good home for the animal is all about getting a great match. LinkedIn is a job aggregator, and they make it easy to interact directly with the company (similar to how a shelter would interact with an adopter). The application process is simplified and clean for both parties, and you can indicate that a job is not a good match or save a job posting. You can set up job alerts for a certain title, location, etc. and that would be helpful if you have a breed, age, shelter, etc. in mind.
One of the more modern desktop dating sites is OkCupid. Reimagining adopting a pet as a “match” might help adopters feel more connected to their new addition, and it might also help ensure a better forever home for the animals. This could transition to the pet adoption world by having profiles for both adopters and dogs, and allowing adopters to “match” with dogs who fit the criteria they set in their preferences. Quick facts could be displayed (similar to the profile, with icons on the right), more details in a full self-summary, and pictures and videos for each animal that the adopter can peruse. This way, animals who don’t fit the adopter’s profile (apartment size, park access, etc.) won’t be shown to the adopter.
Amazon does a great job at showing you things you might like based on your past purchases and browsing history. That could be useful with the search for a pet - if you are frequenting a certain age, size, breed, shelter, etc., you’d get customized results for your recent history.
Journey Map
Solution sketch
Thinking about how to approach the key pages for the MVP, I prioritized minimizing the information collected from the user during profile creation to avoid overload and abandonment, using enticing visuals and the most important data to encourage click through, and giving personality for each dog in their profile.
Crazy 8s
I took some of my favorite elements from the various sites in the lightning demos, and modified them for dog adoption. I played with a lot of different ideas of how to best match someone up with a pet. This came down to considering what users have come to expect from a dog adoption site, the “love connection” elements of a dating site, the “browsing and shopping” elements of an eCommerce site, and the “application” elements of a job hunting site.
City Pups storyboard
There’s a lot of information to gather from the adopter to build their profile, which can be overwhelming and might encourage abandoning the process, so I broke it out into 3 screens:
Create an account: simply gathering the user’s name, email, and password
Information about the adopter: details about their home which will help ensure a good match with available dogs
Information about their desired dog: details about their preferences (which can be adjusted through filters when browsing)
From there, the browsing screen features key information about each dog with a thumbnail picture, enticing a user to click through to learn more about them. The dog detail page has more information, including notes from the shelter staff on what they know about the dog’s personality, or what a foster has said about having the dog in their home.
Finally, the user contacts the shelter with pre-populated information from their profile (which they could fill in if they do not have an account) about their home life.
I went with bold, almost neon colors to match the vibe of city life and add visual excitement to what should be an exciting moment - finding your best friend! I used Quicksand for headers and important information to give a fun and playful vibe and Open Sans for regular copy to enhance readability
Account creation - gathering basic information about the user to create a profile, allowing them to get alerts for new pets, save their preferences, and more.
About the user: learning about the home environment for the potential pet.
About the dog: preferences for the search.
Browse for a dog: automatically uses the data entered during profile creation (or, if no profile is created, all fields are blank).
Dog detail: formatted to give a better holistic view of the dog's personality based on interactions with the shelter staff and/or foster family.
Contact the shelter: automatically pulls information from the dog's profile and the user's profile (if no profile, the user can enter it manually).
User testing insights
The contact button is hard to find on the dog detail page. Because the “Contact” button was small and nestled into the secondary data points, it was difficult to find. The final design featured the contact button at the top of the page, prominently.
I would rather search by shelter for better results. This was an intentional choice, but discovering that users were very interested in a search option was the driving force behind adding it to the final design. The search feature would be specifically used to find the nearest shelter to your home address for hyper-local results, making it easier for city dwellers (who usually don’t have cars) to get there.
I’m not comfortable putting in my full address for security reasons. This was a change to the profile builder - users went from adding their full address to just entering their city and state.
Try it out
Here’s a clickable prototype of the MVP after implementing the changes from user testing.
