about me!
PetPal!
PetPal! matches people with pets from nearby adoption sites based on their preferences.
Year
Spring 2021
Team
Solo Project
Skills
User research + synthesis, user experience + interface design
I conducted research on users with UX research methods learned in class, validated assumptions through paper wireframes and usability testing, and designed high-fidelity prototypes.
Role
👁 Overview
The Problem
Adopting the perfect pet that fits your lifestyle can be a time-consuming search, and sometimes you might know what that is to begin with! It also may take multiple trips to various shelters all over town, and it can be difficult tracking all your potential adoptees.
The Solution
I designed a mobile interface that allows users to see all adoptable pets based in various local shelters. Its features include a preference quiz and filters, pet profiles, messaging, shelter search, and favorites.
🔎 Research
I am adopted my first dog in 2021, and many of my close friends have also become new pet owners as well. By analyzing our shared experiences with, I created a persona.
How Might We...
To prepare for ideation, I pinpointed the negative experiences with the pet adoption process. I then took these struggles and translated them into How Might We questions. This allowed me to explore or potential solutions to these problems.
Card Sort
To understand the types of content that I should design per screen, I conducted an online 20-item card sort with 5 of my peers on Optimal Workshop. This way, I learned how people naturally group and label pet adoption-related topics together.
The results showed that the 3 most common groupings of information were labeled as "Shelter Search/Info", "Filters/For You", and "Animal Information".
🧠 Analyze
Journey Map
The ideas in the "How Might We" session were visualized in this map, which shows the process of someone who is interested in adopting a pet would go through.
⚙️ Prototype
Visualizing PetPal!
To further spur inspiration, I drafted an animated mockup in Adobe After Effects to demonstrate the basic functionality of the Pet Pal interface. From there, I was able to move forward with the remainder of the design process.
🔨 Build
After additional design iterations, I developed the ideal version of the user interface.
App Concept
Refining Your Results
Upon first downloading the app, you can narrow down your preferences by taking an optional 4 question quiz to curate your Pet Profile feed based on your needs.
Swipe right on Pet Profiles you like and keep track of them on the Favorites page.
Click on a Pet Profile to read the animal's general information and contact their shelter's representative to set up appointments or for any inquiries.
Get in Touch
Utilize the Search page to learn about various animal shelters that are partnered with Pet Pal as participating organizations for accessible adoption.
Search by Shelter
Branding
💬 Reflection
Overall, this project was incredibly fun. I self-taught myself how to use Figma, so it was very satisfying to learn a software and its prototyping features. Additionally, this was my first time designing my own app idea from the ground up. The process demanded a little more deeper thinking since there is no existing brand guide to work off of as one would use for a redesign project.
If I were to redo this project from a different angle, I would try to incorporate data from specific shelters local to me so that I could eventually test them with other people.