My Role
market research / user research / evaluator / designer
What is City Pup?
CityPup is a website that help users living in cities, due to their unique needs, find the perfect dog to adopt. Common problems with owning pets in the city includes limited living space, commute/transportation issues, pet-friendly accessibilities among other unique factors.
Using a modified GV design sprint to redesign the current webpage - my goal was to increase adoption rates while providing happy owners with forever homes for dogs.
Problem and Goal
Users currently use a search engine as a resource as well as other social media apps as resources but it takes too much time while not providing enough necessary info (dog size, breed, age, temperament). Current resources connect people based on bonds but too general.
The site needs be able to sort by location, provide general data about the dog, stories, videos, and photo of the dog to capture a bond. These things will help us reach the goal of perfect matching happy owners, and providing forever homes for the dogs.
Research
Through a competitive research I found the following common themes:
- brightly lit, same size photos
- simple search bar serves as call to action
- sort by location is primary
- various filters to sort by
Crazy 8 Exercise Leads to Critical Screen Designs
Using the inspiration from current websites that allow users to filters what they wanted I created 8 screens.
These designs capture a way for users to search by location, filter by needs, importantly see the cute puppy photos.
Sketches
I chose to have a call to action screen as the home screen. It is simple with out overwhelming the user at the start with a ton of filters.
After searching, the user will see a quick bio about the pet as well as at a glance of the map on the side to see the location.
Lastly, the pets user “heart” aka bookmark are saved and categorized into cards. Users can contact the center with one click.
Finding Solutions
Mapping out the solutions to begin the storyboard.
Final Mockups
A lot of the earlier sketches were definitely changed. I originally had vertical tiles but when it came to keeping things consistent I ended up changing the prototype to a horizontal tile to keep with consistency.
Another change I made was increasing the photo size and limited the number of photos that would load. I learned that this helps with cognitive overload as well as giving users time to view and “bond” with their potential pet!
Results
“Yes, I’ve used Petfinder. While it seems simple - it is not straight to the point like this site. The other one doesn’t give me enough information like I think it’s just a name and photo. I like how this site has everything at a glance.”
“The left section which is the filter section. It helps me narrow down exactly what I look for in a dog.
The map is the second most helpful since it tells me exactly where the dog is located. “
Target Users
- college aged, all genders
- lived in housing situations with constraints (apartments, shared living spaces, limited transportation)
- had an interest in adopting a pet
- had experience looking into adoption
- experienced with technology
If I were to revisit this project, I will add videos of the dogs as well as separate the list of dogs and contact further as some users suggested.
