PawConnect
UI/UX Designer & Researcher, Typography, Prototyping
Project Time Frame: 3 Months
Partner: Paulina Sarzosa
PawConnect, Bridging Hearts, Paws Bridging Hearts, Paws, and Care in One Seamless Experience!
PawConnect is an app that allows pet parents to use digital ids for pick-up/drop-off. It also allows for the creation of ID's for people also authorized to pickup & drop off the dog as well as increasing communication with the daycare centers and keeping the parents better updated on their dogs.
Problem Statement
Dog day care centers rely on verbal communication and manual processes. For those centers who have an electronic solution, they have overwhelming UI designs, are mostly websites that are not responsive for mobile use.
Scope of Opportunity:
Research Process
The original idea was for a child daycare app. However, when we started to prepare for the interview process, we found barriers for interviewing the schools and the parents. The schools forbade the parents from performing the interviews and they refuse to give interviews themselves. Considering the work that we had done previously, we decided to change the initial idea of children daycare center to pet care. The original scope of opportunity we found was “Increasing the safety and efficiency of the pickup and drop off system at preschools.”
After the change the scope of opportunity change to:
“Increasing the safety and efficiency of the pickup drop of system at pet day care centers.”
Online Research
Keeping this in mind we started gearing up to conduct research to understand our users and their needs. The first thing we did was online research in order to understand the background of how the pick-up/ drop off service worked, the findings where the following.
Traditionally, pet care centers have relied on verbal communication for both the pickup and the drop off process.
The information related to the pets is most commonly done manually.
The process is time consuming and unnecessarily lengthy.
There is no standardized system through all daycares. Each centers handles the process differently.
User Interviews
With this research in tow we started to prepare for our interviews with the goal of “identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the current pickup/drop off process at pet day care centers, in order to find the areas of opportunity for improvement.
Methodology
We sent out a preinterview survey to 10 participants, and conducted 20-30 min Zoom interviews with the same 10 participants. All participants are people who are pet owners that either currently use or have used day care services for their pets. In each Session participants were asked for permission to record the interview, and were informed the recordings would be deleted once the research phase of the project was done.
Of the 10 participants 7 were females and 3 were males. The participants ages ranged between 25-42.
A 12 question surgery was sent out. The first few questions of the survey consisted of simple demographics such as name, age, gender, if the participants are pet owners, how many pets do they own, if they have used a daycare service for their pets, and if they agreed to a Zoom interview after the questionnaire. The Next five question where more in depth about participants experience with the system.
Survey Results
Question: Who do you live with?
50% of the participants live with family.
30% live alone.
20% live with a partner.
Question: Which of the factors bellow do you think the current drop-off process fulfill?
30% believe the current drop-off process is well structured.
100% believe the current process guarantees the safety of their dogs.
70% believe that there are clear instructions in place.
30% believe the process in effective in handling unexpected challenges.
70% think the process has a short waiting time.
Question: On a scale of 1-5 how satisfied are you with the pick-up process? (1 is very unsatisfied & 5 is very satisfied)
60% of the participants are neither satisfied nor unsatisfied with the current process.
40% of users are somewhat satisfied with the process.
Question: Which of the factors bellow do you think the current pick-up process fulfill?
30% believe the current pick-up process is well structured.
100% believe the current process guarantees the safety of their dogs.
80% believe that there are clear instructions in place.
20% believe the process in effective in handling unexpected challenges.
40% think the process has a short waiting time.
With the survey in tow, we realized that most of our users had general high levels of satisfaction when it came to the pick-up/ drop-off at day care centers. Keeping this in mind, we went on to conduct interviews and where ready to hear out our users. After the interviews we pulled out observations in order to create an affinity diagram to help us gather key insights about all the interviews
Affinity Diagram
After the interviews, we organized our data in an affinity diagram, in order to facilitate gathering key insights from the interviews.
The process of pick up and drop off is very significant for pet owners, as they look for feedback from instructors, in order to verify the pet’s well-being. Is an information exchange space.
“This process should be seen as a space for exchanging information about the dog’s health and well being”
Key Insights
“When I pick him up I get handed a “report card” that tells me how he did during the day.”
Question: Who are the people responsible for your dog?
60% of the participants stated that they alone took care of the dog, regardless of living circumstances.
20% stated that themselves and their partner.
20% stated that themselves and their family.
Question: On a scale of 1-5 how satisfied are you with the drop-off process? (1 is very unsatisfied & 5 is very satisfied)
50% of the participants are very satisfied with the current process.
50% of users are somewhat satisfied with the process.
People most commonly use text message or phone calls to communicate with the centers, however users dislike this being the only means of communication as it can be inefficient and unnecessary.
“You waste your time, you have to call the person, and sometimes they don’t answer”
“Messeges don’t receive a quick response, so I have to call”
People believe the use of technology will make the process more efficient, as well as allowing them to get more information on how the pet is doing during the stay, as well as a method of improving communication.
Empathy Maps & User Persona
“A platform would help a lot because sometimes you have meetings, an emergency, or a significant change in your plan”
“Another important thing is time: any platform where you can update any time”
People express desire to be better informed about the pets’ well-being while at the center.
“Came home with scratches in his face or covered in his own poop.”
“A friend who sent the dogs to the same daycare, his dog passed away because the dog asphyxiated because he was running to much and had breathing problems”
Participants expressed concern about the lack of id checking at pick up and drop off. They rely on verbal trust on who the person says they are
“it's important that they certify that the person that is picking the dog up is the right one.”
“Check for ID’s of who is picking the dog up? It is usually different people at drop-off and pick up.”
From The affinity diagram and the key insights we created a user persona and two empathy maps in order to better understand what were our users frustrations and the potential areas of improvement.
General Empathy Map
User Persona & Empathy Map
After conducting our interviews and gathering our key insights we discovered that the major issue was not in the pick/up drop off process, but more in the communication are and the lack of information of the pets well-being during their stays. With this information in mind, we were ready to start our dosing process
Crazy 8’s
Design Process
Initial Sketches
Wireframes
Low-Fidelity Prototypes With Annotations
User Testing & Findings
We conducted an in person usability study with 3 participants, each round took 20 minutes, 10 minutes for the participants to walk through the prototype, 5 minutes for the participants to fill out a capture grid and 5 minutes to receive verbal feedback. The main objectives of the study were:
Receive feedback on the overall user flow.
Obtaining Feedback on the customizable nature of the home screen.
Acquiring more generalized feedback on the overall feel of the app.
Getting feedback on the call to actions
Testing Findings
The Pros
The use of the Face ID in several options of our app feels technological and modern.
Smooth and practical way to add the information of the pets without feeling overwhelmed (Medical info, records).
The quick actions and the option to customize it feels personal. Slick design
Very Easy to understand
Great features (video camera, direct chat with pet care center)
Home page gives a great overview of all the needed information
iOS features, like wallet and Face ID, make this a very valuable and modern application
Updates: Medicine notifications is something very important I didn’t think about before this
The UI is clean
Love the pet camera views
I like that the updates for pets are separated by each pet and then separated by day.
Areas of Improvement
Streamlined Digital ID Management
The flow for creating a dog profile has been moved to be an option within Account Management, recognizing that it's not a frequent task. Previously, users had the ability to create from the home screen but were limited when it came to editing. Now, all actions—creation, addition, and editing—are consolidated within the Account Tab, providing users with a more cohesive and user-friendly experience.
Voices
“You don’t add a pet every day. It will be okay if you manage all that information from the Account Tab”.
Before
Streamlined Digital ID Management
The user flow has been enhanced for smoother navigation. Previously, users could create a Digital ID from the home screen, but had to navigate to the Account Tab for editing. Now, all actions—creation, editing, and deletion—are consolidated in the Account Tab for a more consistent experience. The home screen is now dedicated to visualization and sharing functionalities.
Voices
“I think it’s unnecessary to do all the actions from the home screen. That’s why you have the “Account Tab”.
Before
After
Language Clarity
The words used to categorize and explain actions were confusing for users, as they expected to find information more closely related to the given names. In light of this, it was decided to edit, respectively, to 'Pet Profile,' 'Authorized People,' and 'Account.'
Voices
“I think I will find the same information in Dog Profile and Digital IDs. There should be distinct labels that clearly highlight the differences between each”.
“In the Profile Tab, you access account management. Perhaps the name doesn't fit right for the actions you can do”.
Before
After
Language Consistency
Users observed a lack of consistency in the language used. While some buttons refer to "Pets," others use "Dogs." It is recommended to establish a uniform language, avoiding a bias towards dog-centric terminology.
Voices
“Make it open to any pet. Sometimes the app screams to me that is for dogs, and sometimes is for pets”.
Before
After
Adding “Delete Pet Profile” Option
Final Mockups
The first step in the design process was to do a crazy 8’s. We set a timer for 8 minutes and folded a piece of paper in 8 sections. Each section belonging to 1 screen. We had 1 minute to work on each screen.
From the wireframes, we created our low-fidelity prototypes. We also annotated the prototypes to include the expected functionalities.
After
Recognizing the sensitivity around the matter, while the act of deletion is emotionally challenging, they still prefer having the option to manage this aspect themselves.
Voices
“I want to be the person who decides when my dog profile should be deleted”.
“It will align more with the app solution, if we can manage completely our dog profiles”.
Before
After
Link to Prototype:
Style Guide
In order for the mobile application to be cohesive, We created a style guide containing the color pallet, typography and contrast ratio and the main components. We also wanted to practice and better use components, so we created components for all of the major elements used throughout the mobile application.
We chose a variation of blue tones, because we wanted the app to convey peace and serenity. We felt that the colors chosen conveyed that, and fell in line with the branding we wanted to achieve for the app. We chose orange as our contrast color because it made a good contrast against the blue.
Prototype Video - Log In Flow
This is a video of the final Prototype of the application. This video represents the flow if a user is just logging back in, and already had an account. For closer inspection of all the design boards, click on the link bellow for access to the Figma Files
Prototype Vide0 - Sign-Up Flow
This is a video of the final Prototype of the application. This video represents the flow of a new user that has never used the app. For closer inspection of all the design boards, click on the link bellow for access to the Figma Files
List of Functionalities
Scannable IDs
Dog owner digital ID for each of the dogs to scan at pick-up and drop-off.
Customizable Shortcuts
Allow users to create personalized quick actions based on their preferences.
Live Video
Provide a live video streaming feature for pet owners to check on their dogs in real-time.
Updates Shortcut
Quick and accessible way to check latest dog's updates about meds, traits and food.
Chat Shortcut
Shortcut for pet owners to check the latest chat with the center
Share & Check ID of Authorized People
Allow pet owners to share digital IDs or credentials for approved pickup persons.
Chat Visualization Dashboard
Dog owner digital ID for each of the dogs to scan at pick-up and drop-off.
Member Chat Directory
Enable easy access to initiate conversations with staff, and other authorized individuals.
Character Limit Chat
Encourage a clear and focused communication between the Center and Pet Owners.
Photo Sharing in Chat
Integrate a feature for dog owners to send photos through the chat.
Call Option for Exceeded Characters
Enhance user experience by offering an alternative communication method for longer messages.
Dog Owner Profile Editing
Enable pet owners to update their information and profile picture.