I worked with an amazing team on my first case study project, PuppyLove, a mobile app that helps dog owners find nearby compatible playmates for their pet, thereby improving overall behavior, health, and quality of life for both pet & owner.
With the problem in mind, we began the design process over the course of a 2 week sprint.
We started with quantitative and qualitative research to help better understand the problem at hand and inform the creation of our user persona.
After creating our user persona, we took the information we collected from our research and verbalized the user insight statement and problem statement.
We took a look at a few direct competitors (TwinDog, BarkHappy, and MatchDog), as well as an indirect competitor (MeetUp). We took notes on what each competitor did well – fun graphics, easy navigation, reliable information, allowing user control/freedom. We also noted down some things we would want PuppyLove to include, such as including more details on the dog & owner profiles and refining filter options.
Ultimately, we wanted PuppyLove to be a kind of dating app for dogs – a place where dog owners could easily swipe through dogs nearby and find the most compatible playmate for their furry friend!
Next, we created a storyboard to help illustrate how our user may interact with the product.
We then brainstormed ideas using the "I like...I wish...What if..." method and then plotted it onto a feature prioritization matrix to help us sort ideas from low priority to high priority.
The next step in the process was to determine our user flow and task flow. From there we would be able to build out our wireframes based on the flows.
Finally, it was time to start sketching! Each member of the team did quick paper prototypes of what we envisioned the app to look like. We got together and dot voted on designs we liked the best and combined those elements together to begin our low-fidelity digital prototypes.
After creating our lo-fi digital prototype, we began our first round of usability testing. We recruited 5 users and asked them to complete 3 main tasks:
1) Create a profile for the dog and the owner
2) Match with a dog
3) Message with the matched profile
We gathered helpful insights from the usability testing, and we took the feedback to begin iterating on our prototype.
Take a look at our low-fidelity clickable prototype below!
We took the insights we gathered from our usability testing to help guide our next iterations of the prototype. While moving to higher fidelity prototyping, we kept in mind that users may need a tutorial after onboarding to provide more context, and that users would appreciate increased visibility of actions performed in the app.
Take a look at our clickable prototype below!
Given the timeframe we had for the project, we weren't able to implement all of the feedback our users provided.
Looking towards the future, we would continue to iterate our high-fidelity prototype and would love to conduct more usability testing and more user research to better guide our updates & changes.
