City Pups

CityPups is a dog adoption app that helps city-dwellers find a dog that fits their lifestyle, living space, and personality. CityPups asks new users a few questions in the onboarding process. These questions help match users with dogs that may be a great fit for them to adopt. Once they finish the onboarding survey the app will provide them with dogs from adoption centers in the area that fit their needs.

Below you can find some statistics about pet adoption:

User Interview Takeaways

This user problem was discovered by several previous pet owners wanting to adopt a new dog but not finding the tools necessary to make an informed decision for their lifestyle. Many users looking for pets spent days, weeks, and months searching nearby shelters for a pet that fit their needs. I asked some of these people about their adoption drawbacks and frustrations. From these interviews I gathered that users don't mind searching every shelter but often lack the time aspect. They wanted to know what all their options were and needed to be ensured they were picking a good pet for their household. They often found the shelters' websites to be lacking the information and pictures necessary to make the trek to go see the pets. Overall users wanted clear and concise pet data able to be filtered for the new companion they truly desired.

Persona 1 

David Lenard is one of City Pups target users. He lives in San Francisco in a one bedroom apartment. He works long hours as a creative producer but wants to balance his time more with a new furry friend. He wants to adopt a large dog he can take hiking on the weekends but has a more moderate energy level where he can leave it at home for hours during the day. He doesn't know what dog is exactly right for him or where to find one that he will be confident that he can care for for life. He wishes the pet adoption process would be easier so he could at least know what his options were.

Persona 2 

Jenny Price is another target user for CIty Pups. She lives in a small family home in Washington D.C. with her husband. They have decided they want to adopt a dog before they are ready to start thinking about having kids. Both are hard workers but can split time taking care of their potential pet. They want to gather information from shelter websites before going to see their prospects but are having trouble with incomplete or hard to find data on adoptable dogs. They also want to check out the dogs behavior beforehand to make sure it is gentle, in case they have kids later on.

Lo-Fi Prototyping & Usability Testing

Above are a few of the initial screens I drew for the CityPups onboarding process. I had users run through these screens to see if they made sense to them and that they could successfully navigate through the app. I asked them to think out loud and say what their expectations were and gave them the goal of finding a puppy to adopt. At the end I asked some follow up questions about how accurate they felt the app chose a dog for them. Did it cater to their personal needs? etc.

Users generally understood the concept of the app and liked the personalization of it. As for areas of improvement, users wanted to pick multiple answers for some questions as to not limit their search. Questions that were too narrow like the size of the user's apartment did not feel applicable to some users because they felt there were more factors for living space for a dog. Lastly, the sliding bar with 'not much' and 'all the time' as options for how often a user could exercise their dog felt too vague for many users.

After the first round of usability testing I adjusted my screens and turned them into higher fidelity.