Pet Caretaking App
Quality pet care, booked by people near you
Project overview 🐾
Rufferal, pronounced as "referral," is a pet caretaking app that allows users to book a range of services for their cats and dogs, including dog walking, cat harness walking, pet sitting, play dates, and overnight care. All pet caretaker profiles highlighted include a number of people who have previously booked services through the app within a 20 mile radius of the user's ZIP code.
Objectives and goals 🏆
This pet walking app was originally completed as a part of Dribbble's Product Design Course, and revisited in this case study in order to meet the following standards:
Improve user flow: Create a smoother user experience by addressing gaps in usability.
Expand feature coverage: Increase the number of screens to provide a more comprehensive design.
Ensure development feasibility: Develop an app that is practical and buildable for developers.
Refresh the design: Reflect my more advanced UI skills by editing a project from my early career.
User testing 📱
Testing the original app, Ruffrl, with new users produced the following metrics:
Update brand name
UX research and testing revealed that the original project name, Ruffrl, was difficult for users to pronounce. Consequently, we changed it to the more phonetically clear name, Rufferal, to enhance usability and user understanding.
Refresh visual identity
Revamped the brand colors to brighter, more saturated tones to evoke a youthful and active feel. Vibrant pet photos with colorful backgrounds to enhance call-to-action pages. Custom pet icons across various pages create consistent service representation.
Update target demographic
Target users seeking affordable, convenient, and comprehensive pet care. Balanced service offerings for both cats and dogs, with a focus on unique services like cat harness walks. Enhanced user flows for both registered users and guests, emphasizing ease of use for key tasks such as sign-up, search, and filtering.
Improving the brand identity and flow ↪
After outlining project goals and user testing, the next step was to define what the newest version of the app entailed.
Brand and identity
Revamped the brand colors to brighter, more saturated tones. Pet photos with brightly colored backgrounds on call to action pages and a bright purple palette evoke a youthful and active feel, while custom pet icons creates recognition of services across various pages.
User personas
Testing the previous app with users, they noted seeking affordable, convenient, and comprehensive pet care. Experience using pet apps like Wag and Rover drove me to seek balanced service offerings for both cats and dogs, with a focus on unique services like cat harness walks.
User flow
The original app offered basic login, search for service, see search results, and profile view. The enhanced user flows offers onboarding for registered users and guests, emphasizing ease of use for key tasks such as sign-up, search, and filtering.
Guests are able to search for services, filter results, and view profiles in order to compare prices and services across competitor apps before creating an account. However, guests are required to create a profile in order to book, message pet caretakers, or save pet profiles.
Expanding feature coverage 🛠
Many existing features of the original app were transferred and expanded to create new screens with more complex interactive elements for Rufferal, focusing on onboarding, search, and pet caretaker profiles.
Create an account
To accommodate the necessary data and workflows for a comprehensive user experience, the account creation workflow was updated to include building a detailed user profile, ensuring that all relevant information is captured and managed efficiently.
Early wireframes of the app included being able to register as a pet caretaker. This was ultimately removed in order to scale back the project scope.
Create a pet profile
Pet profiles streamline the search and booking process by allowing users to filter pet caretakers based on specific quantifiable information, such as species, age, size, and whether the pet is spayed or neutered. Users can fill out information regarding behavior and personality or care plan notes for feeding, walking, overnight care, medical care, special needs, and additional notes.
If a user adds her pet profile to a service, the pet profile information is automatically transferred over to pet caretakers instead of having to be relayed manually by the user. One or multiple pets can be added to a single service.
This feature is available for registered users only, after create an account during onboarding or by accessing the Account page on the app.
In-depth search and filter
A more detailed search and filter allows users to add filters to the pet caretakers shown, select a preferred date and time, add saved pet profiles (for registered users only), and sort the results.
Testing and development ⌨️
Working with a developer meant testing product feasibility. Initial wireframes were translated into working prototypes, and as is always the case, testing revealed weak spots in the app. The following key changes and refinements were made to initial drafts:
MagicLink password
Initial versions of the app allowed users to create an account via email or SSO, or bypass account creation for guest browsing. Since this project is scoped as a downloadable app for mobile, Rufferal switched to Magic Link authentication for a streamlined login experience, replacing the previous password reset feature.
Update components
Simplifying activation toggles and checkbox functions to reduce user confusion.
Search landing page
If a user selects a pet service from the search dashboard, she is led to a more detailed search page where users can specify if the booking is for a dog, a cat, or both; the calendar day or multiple days; repeat bookings; time of day; and ZIP code.
Scope adjustments
Due to scope creep, the project was scaled back, resulting in the removal of the Pet Caretaker signup option on the "Create a Profile" screen.
Key takeaways 🔑
Significant advancements were made between the first version of the app (Ruffrl) and V2.0 (Rufferal), specifically in branding, the onboarding process, and search and filter functionalities. While the original app only had ten screens, the new version offers 31. The updated app led me to the following conclusions:
Apply market research from similar apps
Users don’t want to learn new interfaces when searching for quality pet care, especially if they are guests trying to find out if a new app is worth downloading. Utilizing similar services as other pet caretaking apps, including Rover, Wag, and Walkies, created a smoother and more familiar user flow. Similarly, property rental apps where users are searching within a specific ZIP code, including Airbnb and Peerspace, provided ideas for search and filter pages.
Partners make the process easier
Working with a developer resulted in some of the most important changes in feasibility, namely refining the flow and preventing scope creep. Having a second set of eyes to test flow allows for an early look at app flow and functionality, as well as having a second opinion of where user pain points may arise. The developer also served as the most prominent voice, urging me to scale back and not let the project succumb to scope creep.
Thinking about future versions
Expanded iterations of Rufferal could include additional screens and features, including:
Payment: Implementing a payment system for booking pet caretaking directly through the app.
Messaging: Expanding the messaging functionality to facilitate better communication between pet owners and pet caretakers.
Caretaker registration flow: Developing a streamlined process for registering as a caretaker during onboarding, which includes gathering and verifying experience to increase user trust in Rufferal's caretakers.