As part of Dribbble's Product Design Cohort, we were given an assignment to build a mobile dog walking app. I was responsible for 100% of the design process which took place over a 6 week time frame.

Paw Parents

• For those of us who own dogs, we know that they become part of our families as soon as we bring them home. Whether you consider yourself a dog parent or not, we often treat our pets as if they were our babies. Thus the question becomes, how will we ever trust the safety of our dogs(babies) to a stranger we found through an app?

Problem Statement

• Many dog owners are unable to provide the required exercise for their pets, but also struggle with finding someone they can rely on to help them out.

Approach

• Research 

  • Empathized with the user

  • Market & Online Research

  • User Research & Persona

• Ideate 

  • prioritized best solutions for users pain points.

  • created user flow based on persona

  • made wireframes to test out page layouts in low fidelity.

• Design

  • components & colour scheme

  • high fidelity prototype

• Testing

  • had users test the app for feedback and refinement

  • iterate, iterate, and iterate some more!

Research

• After conducting a user interview, speaking with friends, downloading existing apps for comparative analysis and completing online research of my own, I was able to prioritize the most vital pain points that needed to be addressed.

• From the research gathered, I created a persona in order to start building out the user journey.

Defining Success in Low Fidelity

• Make finding relevant walkers a streamlined process

• Only showing relevant options(time, location and preferences)

• Establish trust between owner and walker(badges, reviews, seeing friends

  who use them)

• Remove redundant steps in booking confirmations by storing all data 

  from onboarding

• Alleviate feelings of frustration and uncertainty when looking for a walker

Visual Design and Branding

By this point, I had determined that I wanted to design this app around establishing trust.

• I chose to do a monochromatic blue colour scheme as blue represents trustworthiness, dependability, and security.

• After brainstorming ideas for a name and based on feedback received, the name "Leashed" provided the greatest sense of comfort for dog owners.

• The aim was to keep the page as neat as possible with fewer colours and lots of white space. This would help to correctly direct the users attention.

Prototyping and Testing

Now things are getting exciting! I created a prototype to put into the hands of test users and couldn't wait to hear what they liked about the design and what they thought could be improved upon to further enhance the user experience.

Try the prototype here!

Implementing new features from testing

After more research and iterating, these are the solutions I was able to come up with.

A major point of emphasis I received from testing was that the users wanted to be able to message a walker before booking to discuss any possible issues.

• I added a message button on the walker profile card and created a card flip animation to be able to display a message text box on the same page. Any message sent here would start a conversation that could be accessed at any point from the navigation bar.

Working Version of Message Button Feature

The second major addition to come out of user testing was the implementation of the "history" page which would be used to store completed walk details.

• Users reported wanting to know what happened on the walk, whether their dog did their business or not, and any fun facts that might have occurred to let them know how it went.

• This feature would help owners to plan the rest of the day for their dogs.

• It also ties in to an earlier quote from my user interviewee who stated that they wanted to know if something happens on the walk, good or bad.

History Page - New feature added based on feedback

The third change I made was removing the friends feature of the app.

• While users liked the idea of being able to book with friends, and valued seeing their reviews on walkers, they felt that it overcomplicated the actual process when trying to book a walk together.

• Deemed it would be easier to communicate outside the app and then to book the same group walk independently.

• There was also a privacy issue for some users. They didn't like the thought of their friends being able to see their upcoming walks schedule.

Reflections

With this being my first design project, I found myself presented with many challenges along the way. These challenges taught me many things about the design process and here are a few of the main takeaways I took from the project.

• With this being a project, the app was built solely with the user's needs in mind. For my next project as a designer I would like to include utilizing design to create feasible business results to see how different the process would be.

• I learned that design is an iterative process. At the beginning of this project, I thought once I completed a section that meant I was done with it. Oh was I ever wrong about that! I found myself constantly going back to previous steps after I had learned something new or received a suggestion on how to improve my design. Design consists of continuous improvement.

• The notion that I needed to put my vision on the back burner and prioritize feedback from others in order to be able to deliver the best possible product. It was tough at first to understand why this is such an important mindset in design but after going through tons of iterations, I can see clearly now why it is so important. Sometimes what I thought was the best solution turned out to be not even in the top three options. Listen to and trust your users!

• This project accentuated the value of user testing. I began the project trying to be perfect at every turn. This slowed me down a lot and once I sent out my first version for testing, I understood that is was more important to receive and build upon feedback than it was to get it right on the first try. I will begin to ask for feedback earlier in the process next time so it can be implemented at more steps along the way.

Overall, the app received positive reviews from my testers.

They felt that by matching them solely with walkers who met their needs, it helped to establish the trusting element that I set out to achieve from the onset.

I can't wait to see what my next project has in store for me!