A mobile app designed for finding pet friendly locations and setting up play-dates for your pups.
Problem
Dog owners in Austin, Texas feel overwhelmed and confused when searching for dog friendly destinations.
Hypothesis
Dog owners would benefit from a service that clarifies how dog friendly an activity or event space is. This would help users determine which parks are designated as off leash or which restaurants allow pets on the patio.
Methods
5 user interviews, online survey of nearly 70 dog owners, storyboarding, lo- to hi-fi usability tests.
Solution
Fido Friendly provides profiles for dog friendly destinations which compiles all the useful and up to date information.
Research
The design challenge for this concept project was very open ended: design a mobile app that makes an aspect of your daily life easier. My research partner and I decided to tackle a minor issue we face as dog owners on a daily basis; if we can't bring our furry friends everywhere, what is the best place to find information on where we can take them? And because every dog is different, what information is helpful in making this decision?
Interview Insights
If yes, what resources do you use? If no, what could those resources look like?
"an app that tells me all the places that are dog friendly + where the best doggie day care or dog walkers are"
"I ususally google individual resturants or look at Bring Fido. A more comprehensive list of bars/cafe/etc would be great!"
"I wish Yelp had more indicators for dog-friendly places. They indicators in restaurants, but not for clothing stores, for example."
"Sometimes I'm not sure if a place in going allows dogs, can be lots of digging in their website to find out"
"When searching for places via Yelp or Google, having a badge or category that denotes it as dog-friendly"
Affinity Diagram
After collecting data through an online survey and in person interviews, we broke down our findings into an affinity diagram consisting of the activities dog owners already enjoy doing, any conflicts users run into when pursuing these activities with their dogs, and what might mitigate these conflicts.
User Persona
From there, we created a user persona to represent our target audience and a UX scenario that would lead them to our product.
Storyboarding User Scenario
Design
The focus of this design process was user testing and design iteration based on testing feedback. While UI critique was taken consideration for subsequent iterations, app functionality was the goal of testing and iterating, as the design challenge was to create an app that facilitates the day to day activities of an Austinite.
First iteration of wireframes.
Second iteration including illustrated background and filter icons.
User Testing
After establishing the style as well as functionality of the prototype, we tested two scenarios users would use the app for: finding a dog park, and editing their dog's profile. Some key takeaways from the testing were: people felt some of the filters were unnecessary as they would just type to search anyways; and: user would like the option to add or remove dog's from their profile, as well as having a simple way to favorite locales and have them appear on their profile. Adobe XD Prototype
Final iteration with improved dog tags, locale profiles, and a built out events page.
Lessons Learned
I'm ultimately very happy with the way this project turned out and there isn't much I would have changed along the way. If we had more time, I would have liked to build out more of the UI and branding, working towards a style guide, and include some more interaction design into the prototype.
