iPet Website
role
Lead UX/UI Designer
Project Goal
iPet is a pet discovery website that seeks to solve the problem of pet adoption taking a long time. It solves this problem in two ways: offering a pre-approval service, and a large pet search of all the local shelters and rescues.
Target Audience
The primary user is between 21 - 65 and have a wide range in occupation and location.
Key Challenges or Constraints
I was working alone, so I had to fill all the roles while creating the App Design.
Research Conducted
I conducted user interviews, which I then turned into empathy maps to better understand the target user and their needs. I discovered many people struggle with the adoption process, like having to adopt two cats at once, or waiting too long to get approved. This makes the experience of adding a family member unnecessarily stressful.
I uncovered 3 pain points:
Shelters were difficult to deal with: Individual shelters have their own protocols which can be difficult to navigate as a user.
Pets were required to be adopted in pairs Users looking for one pet want to clearly understand which pets are available to adopt on their own.
Adopting takes too long: Shelters & Rescues have complicated procedures which are not streamlined. Often calling references and a vet are the most time-consuming activities.
Sketches & Wireframes
I sketched out paper wireframes for each screen in my website, keeping the user pain points about feeling stressed about a complicated adoption process in mind.
Wireframes of various sizes
user testing
I conducted one rounds of usability studies. Findings from the study helped guide the design from wireframes to mockups.
Round 1 Findings:
Some participants wanted more questions added to the quiz.
In the pet matching quiz and the pre-approval users wanted more flexibility for specific situations answering questions.
Users wanted breed to play a more important role in pet matching and in the pre-approval.
Mockups
Users had trouble noticing the pre-approval option. In my studies they had to scroll down very far on the home page to find it. I added a pre-approval CTA button on the menu to the right so it was more prominent for users.
Based on the insights from the usability study, I made several changes to the pet matching quiz. I moved the breed selection to the top of the quiz since users indicated this was very important to them.
high-fidelity prototypes
Conclusion
Moving forward there are 3 things I would like to iterate on:
Conduct follow up usability testing on the new website.
Develop the education area of the site and test how that can be more effective to users.
Refine the interactions on the matching quiz and on the pre-approval form.