Project overview (TL;DR)

I know you might not have much time so here a small summary if you're in a hurry.

App description

Petsy is a app where dog owners can find trustworthy and certified dog sitters to take care of their dogs. They can find a walker easily for a few hours or days to take care of your dog, book a training or even find a dog event close to you. The app certify every walker profile so you can trust them. Stop worrying for your dog when you're busy, Petsy is taking care of it !

Brief

To create a dog walking app from scratch with researches, strategy and flows, design and design system. This mobile app should help dog owners to find a trustworthy walker wherever they are. The trust is their main issue and sometimes they need more than a simple walk: training or even a dog sitter for a few days.

Work and result

In this project, I came through all the product design process from the market researches, persona, UX conception with wireframes and customer flow on Figjam to the final design, prototypes and tests with Figma and Google Form.

I delivered a market research, 6 app views (splash screen, home, filters, profile and message, walk booking), 1 complete prototype for a scenario and design system

My Roles: market analysis, UX/UI designer, tester and iterations

Time: 9 weeks (part time)

Mission: Concept project as part of the Dribbble Product Design Course (May 2023)

Who are the dog owners ?

User Research

I needed to know their issues, pain points, point of view and concerns for such app.

So I ran a study with real dog owners: 6 of them improved my knowledge. Each had different lifestyle (city, countryside, social or scared dog...) but all need to trust the walker. They wasn't familiar with dog app as they usually ask their family and friends. They are mainly concerned about the security and safety of their dog. All owners told me they would never trust somebody if this person never had dog.

After this interview phase, I could share my insights with my fellow designers and we could express their pain points and important features.

Market Research

The market is full of existing apps, how can I be different ? What is missing and what is mandatory for the dog owners?

I downloaded 3 competitors and used it as a regular dog owner to experienced their onboarding, user flow and features.

Persona

After my market reseach and interviews, I finally had a better understanding of the issues that the dog owner faced. I also have a better idea of their personnality and what they are expected.

Thus, while I was creating the user flow and the design, I always kept in mind: "Am I solving John issue?", "Will he find what he was coming for ?"

User flow

I created a simple and clear onboarding for the app. I wanted to allow the user to create and complete their profile directly and be able to use the app right after.

I told myself that people discover a new app when he has time but he opens an app when you absolutely need it. This is why I propose an onboarding with profile creation. So when the user come back, everything is settled and he can easily find a walker, no waisted time.

User flow

I created a simple and clear onboarding for the app. I wanted to allow the user to create and complete their profile directly and be able to use the app right after.

I told myself that people discover a new app when he has time but he opens an app when you absolutely need it. This is why I propose an onboarding with profile creation. So when the user come back, everything is settled and he can easily find a walker, no waisted time.

Conception

Wireframe

I sketched several wireframe versions including different level of details and feature until I was satisfied.

I inspired from Airbnb as the proposal is the same: instead of flat, this app propose dog walkers. The level of trust and information is similar and the expectations are the same.

Moodboard

I did some researches to gather design inspirations and present an overall design that I wanted to give to my app.

I wanted something playful, colorful, clean and and young. I created my palette color with pastel color and a sans serif typography to remain simple.

Design and UI library

I started creating my graphic identity and then apply it after my wireframe. I created components and design system along with the design, register the color and typo on the Figma file to improve the efficiency and be sure everything respect the guidelines.

Prior to create the prototypes, I spend times creating scaling design to fit with the different screen sizes. As mobile app, I only did it for mobile sizes.

If it were a responsive design, I would create desktop and tablet frames in addition to cover everything.

Prototype

Once I had all my designs, I needed to use them in real conditions. So I created prototypes on Figma.

The videos shows the user flow to find a dog walker and book a service.

I updated the flow and interactions after the first feedbacks of user testers who help me to improve the UX and UI after the prototype. I mainly added several interactions to make it more realistic and updated the active/inactive states of buttons.

Use filter

This video shows the first step when you filter the result to select a profile.

Profile details

This videos shows the profile interaction: scroll, save as favorite, open the details.

Book a walk

This videos shows how to book a walk as last step on this scenario.

Next step together?

Summary

Thank you for watching this case study.

With this project I discovered the trust issue that a dog owner can face when he needs to choose a person to take car of its dog. All the researches, conception and design was mainly focus on this biggest issue. It's also the first reason why a dog owner wouldn't use such app. What a challenge !

Usually, I have more guidelines and constraints to build a product. The customer confirms the strategy and design after each step. This was clearly my biggest finding.

If I could start again I would improve my process: spend more qualitative time on the interview and market researches.

Contact

If you are interested about my work, I will post and update the new projects I used to work on and the ones I'm currently doing.

If you want to work with me, don't hesitate to contact me on LinkedIn.

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