Find the perfect pup for your lifestyle!
Adoption web site sprint exercise
• UX Research Analyst • Project Management • Sketching • Site Architecture • User Journey • Interviewer • Stakeholder Presentation •
In this Sprint challenge, I was a team of one with 5 days to get up-to-speed on this Google Sprint project.
This what I did:
Figma, FigJam, Figma Mirror, Zoom, Adobe Photoshop, Google Suite, Microsoft Suite
CityPups is a hypothetical startup whose goal is to help people living in cities adopt the perfect dog.
This project gave me 5 days to come up with one of many solutions to the problem for CityPups. Because I adore dogs, naturally I had a lot of fun with this project!
My one goal was to be brought on board to run a design sprint quickly testing out a possible solution to help city dwellers find and adopt that perfect dream dog.
Through research and interviews CityPups had discovered that people living in cities struggle to find the right dog to adopt due to their unique needs.
Design Constraints
To help the user find a dog who is a great fit and their unique set of needs the key was to get up to speed quickly; understand the provided research; and build a plan for the week.
By reviewing the primary and secondary research that was provided before starting this project, I had determined that finding a solution to help city dwellers find their forever dog included providing details that are not available on other sites such as:
Ellie, age 27
Goals: wants to feel confident that she and her pup will be a great fit for each other - both in emotional connection, and practical factors related to her lifestyle.
Successes
Pain-Points
The very first step to this Sprint was to familiarize myself with the provided research and to completely empathize and understand the user. After careful review and copious notes, I went ahead and listed the key ingredients.
Needs of the User:
The dog needs to be a good fit:
Knowing the dog beforehand:
Feeling confident in their adoption decision
Clearly articulating the problem I'm trying to solve is the most important starting point of any design. It's critical to understand the human-focused problem before being able to solve it. It's not the solution, but creates an innovative space to work within.
Here are the questions I had determined to solve:
How might we help the user feel confident in their adoption decision?
How might we find a way for the user to meet their potential family member?
How might we make certain the dog goes to a forever home and isn’t returned?
How might we make the adoption process faster and more specific?
Our primary user shares typical constraints including:
For competitors, I decided to take a hard look at eCommerce sites which utilized filters for a selection process. Motorola, Zenni, and PetFinder. Really focusing on what I could use for my CityPups idea.
Motorola Site Notes
PetFinder Site Notes
Zenni Site Notes
This process was a lot of fun. The idea was to focus on a large selection of filters with options to change, and to see side by side comparisons before a user needed to make a decision.
The Crazy 8 sketches were a wonderful and intuitive way to move the project along to the next step, the Storyboard.
Splash Screen: Fun and inviting
The quiz brings up the most important issues that have arisen from the user interviews, where many of the other options will be available in the menu filter once the user has entered the site.
Once the quiz is completed, the user will be brought to a pre-filtered page with the options on the left to make adjustments.
When the user clicks on a dog, they move to the detail page and a quick view option is available for the first round of viewing.
When the user clicks on a dog, they move to the detail page. A quick view option is available for the first round of viewing.
Compiling the research, flow, sketches and storyboard, I put together a look and feel which incorporated the existing CityPups logo brand. Yellow, purple, gray with highlights of soft blue and yellow give the site a feeling of bright, light, and happy.
Site Objectives
Interviewees
Overall, the sprint was a success. The testers really liked the site and felt that it was decades ahead of what is currently available even if a few elements could be cleaned up.
Concerns which came up:
The participants seemed excited about the idea and a few had some additional features to add to the site moving forward. This behavior demonstrated to me that they were invested in the solutions presented to them.
I couldn't help myself but to iterate one more time with a few of the changes. It really helped me feel complete on the sprint.
The excitement of my users got me interested in following up on this project. They really wanted to know if it would ever be launched and they also had some interesting suggestions: