PLENTY OF PUPS

Project Overview: Plenty of Pups is a dog adoption application engineered to simplify a dog lover's search.

Problem: There are 3,500 dog shelters in the United States today. Altogether, there are around 14,000 shelters and rescue groups in the U.S. with no-kill shelters attempting to save 9 out of 10 animals. Animal shelters cost American people nearly 2 Billion dollars on average to maintain annually. Numbers like these make it imperative to create a simpler and more user friendly dog adopting strategy.

Process: Our product team was assigned to create a Mobile and Smart Watch App for users who live alone in a crowded city environment. These users follow dog agencies on various social media platforms and save dogs they'd like to adopt. User often gets disappointed when search engines aren't clear on logistical information. They perceive dog descriptions as being too general - for example, it may say "this dog doesn't require a lot of space" - but how small is too small?

My Role: Product Designer

Responsibilities:

Research Summary:
We selected 3 main methods of user research

Quantitative Research
According to www.dosomething.org, approximately 2.7 million dogs are killed each year because shelters are full and there aren't enough adoptive homes.

Card Sorting
I used optimal workshop to conduct a card sorting test. The analytics in the popular placements matrix proved to be very resourceful in helping to conclude how users grouped certain topics. This was instrumental in creating the information architecture.

Remote Usability Research
I conducted remote usability testing towards the end of a two week design sprint. Testing included 5 participants from various backgrounds who were all dog lovers interested in adopting a new pet dog.

Research Summary: Pain Points

Smaller dogs are a preference

Dog has to play well with others.

Big city lifestyle.

Adopted dog can't be too needy.

Information Architecture

Crazy 8's

Towards the tail of end of a week long design sprint, I conducted a Crazy 8. Crazy 8's are fast sketching exercises that challenge people to sketch eight distinct ideas in eight minutes. The goal was to push beyond my first idea and to generate a wide variety of solutions to my challenge.

Digital Wireframes

This is the homepage, products, ordering and checkout pages of the mobile app. It's simple, clean, easy to navigate and the user can place orders for their medication.

Wireframes

UI Design

I opted for a friendly and warm theme to help highlight the affectionate aspect of dogs up for adoption.
My design centers around the color purple, which represents peace, strength and compassion.

Usability Testing: Findings

Upon creating a prototype I conducted user testing to how easily the users could navigate the website.

Final Screens / Deliverables

Smart Watch Version

PLENTY OF PUPS

Project Overview: Plenty of Pups is a dog adoption application engineered to simplify a dog lover's search.

My Role: Product Designer

Responsibilities:

User Research - Quantitative, Card Sorting, Remote Usability

Design - Information Architecture, Wireframing, Prototyping, UI for Mobile and Smart Watch

Research Summary: Pain Points

Smaller dogs are a preference

Dog has to play well with others.

Big city lifestyle.

Adopted dog can't be too needy.

Information Architecture

Crazy 8's

Towards the tail of end of a week long design sprint, I conducted a Crazy 8. Crazy 8's are fast sketching exercises that challenge people to sketch eight distinct ideas in eight minutes. The goal was to push beyond my first idea and to generate a wide variety of solutions to my challenge.

Digital Wireframes

This is the homepage, products, ordering and checkout pages of the mobile app. It's simple, clean, easy to navigate and the user can place orders for their medication.

Wireframes

Wireframes are useful to make outlines for the perspective designs.

​The initial wireframes were pencil and paper sketches, for the digital screen I created the initial home page in Figma to show management. Once approved I moved to Adobe XD to create low fidelity prototype which was used for user testing.

Receiving the feedback we started creating low-fidelity prototypes for product pages.

We used Adobe XD to create high fidelity prototype.

UI Design I opted for a friendly and warm theme to help highlight the affectionate aspect of dogs up for adoption. My design centers around the color purple, which represents peace, strength and compassion.

Usability Testing: Findings Upon creating a prototype I conducted user testing to how easily the users could navigate the website.

Users found the app easy to use and needed no further instructions on how to adopt a dog on it.

Additional options such as selecting the height and weight of the dog was very useful to users.

Color and font selection were well received and app overall fun to interact with.

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Final Screens / Deliverables

Smart Watch Version

The initial wireframes were pencil and paper sketches, for the digital screen I created the initial home page in Figma to show management. Once approved I moved to Adobe XD to create low fidelity prototype which was used for user testing.

UI Design

I opted for a friendly and warm theme to help highlight the affectionate aspect of dogs up for adoption.
My design centers around the color purple, which represents peace, strength and compassion.

Usability Testing: Findings

Upon creating a prototype I conducted user testing to how easily the users could navigate the website.