Guau app
Guau is a mobile app concept that helps dog owners find reliable dog walkers
The challenge
Create a service to connect dog owners with dog walkers.
The problem
Busy dog owners find it hard to find someone to take their dog for a walk while they are working or when they are away. They want someone who is reliable and caring, and they want to find them quickly. The goal of this project is to identify pain points for Dog owners journey and create a minimum viable solution while still
The Product Design process
The research
To start designing a product solution, I identified people I knew as potential app users. The information collected on this research was the starter point I needed to begin the design process and put together solutions to later test my assumptions with them.
User interviews
Quantity: 4 interviews / Who: Dog owners and Dog walkers / Method: 1:1 interviews
I interviewed dog walkers and dog owners to give me more understanding about what a dog owner is expecting to find on a platform and what dog walkers would like to see before accepting a booking request.
These are the main findings from dog owners' interviews:
• Their first point of contact to take their dog for a walk are family members or friends
• They will prefer a dog walker who will take care of their dog as if it is their own.
Dog owners want to find reliable dog walkers who don’t cancel last minute, are responsible, and are on time.
Market research
A comparison of features and services between the leading dog walking booking platforms in Australia, where I focused in these business areas:
• Services
• Platform
• Content
• Design
The product
Wireframes and usability testing
At this point, the wireframes were only focused on the main user tasks, with very basic information because I focused more on functionality rather than how the final product will look like once completed. I wanted to make sure the fundamentals were working.
Conducting usability testing during the wireframing stage was key for validating the user flow I created in earlier stages.
The purpose of the usability testing was to gather as much information as possible from the user to understand what they expected to find in their journey.
The task
To find a suitable dog walker and book a time with them.
User feedback
After conducting user interviews, these are the main changes made from the user flow:
Availability was not clear: The user didn't feel confident about doing a booking because it wasn't sure if the dog walker was available.
• Changes: Add a range of time available before the search results and in the filters menu.
Find a better way to contact dog walkers: The user didn’t think about the need to message the dog walker, only if it was necessary.
• Changes: Request a booking CTA was added, followed by an automated message in the chat between the dog owner and the dog walker.
Help dog owners make the right decision: The user would prefer to have a recurrent dog walker than changing for a new one every time.
• Changes: Add a reviews section within the dog walker profile.
Visual design
Design System
A basic design system was created to give visual consistency, where colour and typography styles were defined, as well as the main components to cover the fundamental user interface elements of this flow.
Prototype
Try the user flow below.
Please note this is a prototype and not all buttons are actionable.
