PetPal App provides the experience of connecting busy and needy dog owners with trustworthy close by dog walkers.

Hi there! My name is Jackie, and I am a Graphic and UX/UI Designer. I love animals and have so many family and friends who have pets, but are not always able to give them the attention they deserve due to other obligations in their life. I've created a case study on an app I created to connect trustworthy professional animals lovers to help animal owners with their pets needs with just a click of button.

Problem Statement

Users who work full time with a busy social life cannot find trustworthy care for their dogs while they are not home. With family not always being an option, they need a product that allows them to easily search and find trustworthy care for their animals.

User Research

I conducted in-person interviews with 6 people with different backgrounds, all whom own an animal and have a busy life. With the wide range of animal owners, I spoke with, I was able to confirm that they want to trust the person they are leaving their animal with. Verified background checks, real life photos, distance, and face-to-face meetings. Below are some questions and answers I asked and received as well as some of the pain points I should focus on.

Market Research

I decided to try some of the popular current apps to get in the mind set of a user. I wanted to see what worked and didn't worked.

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. I created a user persona of "Jenna: a young teacher who has a social life and works hard during the day. I need to keep in mind while designing the user flow and the design, "Am I solving Jenna's issue?", "Will she 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 profiles 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 comes back, everything is settled and he can easily find a walker.

Moodboard

The images/colors below were my inspiration in my color palette and design direction. This gives the feeling that dog owners, dogs, and reliable dog walkers can feel comfortable. Keywords #trustworthy #bright #soft #friendly

Wireframes

Below these wireframes showcase what would be the most viewed areas for the user. Profile, Messages, Home Page, and Search. I wanted to play around with these ideas, since they would get the most activity and what drives the user to continue throughout the app and find their needed service.

The final design on the next slide just brings it more to life with colors and small adjustments to the layout to make it more user friendly.

Design System

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.

Final Design

After going back and forth on how to simplify the onboarding and how the user can quickly set up an appointment for a desired service these are the final designs I came up with. I had a few people I interviewed do some user testing with the app itself and based on their feedback I made some small changes to help bring this app to life and make it more functional as well as athletically pleasing to the eye.

Below you will see how the user can book a service quickly, add their pet, and desired day and time.

Prototype

Once I had all my designs, I needed to test the functionality, so I created prototypes on Figma. The videos below show various users flows to find a dog walker or any other service for their cat or dog.

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 a few components that could make the experience more realistic.

Onboarding

The video below shows a user going through the onboarding process.

Filter/Search

This video shows a user going through the search and filter process.

Book Service

This video shows a user going through the booking process.

Summary

Thank you for taking the time to read through my case study. With this project I discovered that trust is the most important for a pet owner. My research, conception and designs had to have that as my main focus. Most pet owners won't use the app because they are afraid to trust it and a stranger. Talk about a tough challenge!

I believe that I found a way to accomplish this tough challenge by making sure the app had a clear focus and features such as: reviews, chats, meet and greets, and professional badges.

If I could start again I would improve my process: spend more qualitative time on the interview and market researches. I also would spend some more time on implementing maybe a referral feature and some other design elements to enhance the app even more.

Contact

To see more or any of my other work, here is my portfolio. I will also be posting and updating new projects I used to work on and the ones I'm currently doing on my Dribble page.

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