Happy Tails is a concept application that allows busy humans to find the perfect walker for their four-legged, furry friends.

Roles: UX Research / UI Design

Tools: Figma, FigJam

Timeline: 6 weeks

Overview

As a part of Dribbble's inaugural Product Design course, we designed a dog walling application to help busy dog owners find the perfect dog walker.

Problem to Solve

There are busy humans all over the United States that own dogs in need of being walked. These energetic little beasts are known for great mischief making and destruction. Such humans are in need of a way find dependable and trustworthy dog walkers to help bring peace to their very busy households.

Pet ownership statistics show ownership levels have reached new highs during the past couple of years. A 2021-2022 survey conducted by the American Pet Products Association (APPA) found that 70% of households own a pet. Among the 70%, there are 69 million U.S. households that own a dog.

Solution

Here is Happy Tails, a dog walking app that helps you easily find walkers near you. You can jump right in and begin exploring walkers to find someone you can trust with your best friend.

Happy Tails Adventure

Research

After defining the problem, I conducted interviews of dog owners near me who have used dog walking and care services.

This is Jess, a thirty-something Marketing Exec at a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company based in Portland, Oregon. She has an energetic pup named Barry, whose happiness is her highest priority even during her busy days.

After getting an understanding of users in my area and their needs, I did some Market Research of the existing dog walking / service apps.

Next, I mapped out one of the main user flows that could help improve the experience for Jess... Booking a Walk and finding Trusted Walkers.

Wireframes

With the flow for booking a walker mapped out, I created both low-fi and high-fidelity wireframes of the interface experience for finding and booking a dog walker.

Visual Design

This is the final visuals created for finding a walker and booking a walk from the Happy Trails app.  This version came from several iterations and testing with different users.

Reflections

This concept is a solid start, but there are a few features I would like a chance to iterate on based on feedback and extra functionality to build out this app.

1. The main 'Explore' landing page

This is a good start and users were able to understand where to go next, but I would like to build out a more interactive map experience like we see with Airbnb. 

I would also like to add more visuals to create more of an 'experience' view like Airbnb. Where we you can select more types of experiences for your dog.

2. Book a Walk search for walkers

I would like to test out different ways of filtering and how to display to make it easy to see and change.

3. Build out the visuals for the Walk navigation view

This view shows walks that have been taken or that are scheduled for the future. This could be a good jumping off place for scheduling future walks and sending reminder notifications of walks coming up. Maybe even send notifications if favorite walkers are available.

4. Build out the Inbox view

This could be the main communication hub with the dog walker if you didn't want to share your mobile phone number.  Some thinking and research to do with this feature to figure out how to make it a true communication hub.