Goal:
Help
Even the most responsible dog owners can have the unexpected happen to them. Contingency plans can fall through.
During this one week design exercise, I explored the issue of unforeseen circumstances that prevent a person from taking their dog on a walk. Explorative design challanges helped me understand that most of the possible solutions created stressful situations for either the dog owner or the dog walker. My focus from there was to eliminate as much of the stressful part as possible in my solution.
Based on the suggestion of an interviewee, I first explored a model that would allow a dog-owner to book a dog-walker as one would book an uber ride: by selecting their dog's location and reaching out to nearby dog-walkers. I also explored alternate solutions, which included a more task rabbit style approach, where dog-walkers could bid on a job based on how far out of their way they would have to go.
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Neither of these flows seemed to satisfy the conerns raised by either the dog owners or the dog walkers. After further interviews, I decided to follow the more personal approach, but to simplify the payment structure. This would speed up the process of booking, while preserving the piece of mind of the dog owner.
In order to decrease the stress-factors on the dog owners, I also decided to include walk-in-progress updates, a chat function, and a walk summary.
After some paper iterations, the final flow for the dog owner is displayed below.
My hope is to revisit this project with a better understanding of the challenges of being a dog walker. Having to go inside someone's home to retrieve their pet is an extreme liability (or, as one dog-walker put it "liability city"), especially if you haven't met the dog before. I'd like to redesign this app with the dog-walker in mind.
