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City PUPS

CityPups is a new startup that wants to help people living in cities find the perfect dog to adopt. Oftentimes it is found that people struggle to find the right dog to adopt due to their unique needs and lifestyle. CityPups wants to increase the adoption rate, ensure owners are happier and create better forever homes for dogs. 
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Based on an individual's unique needs, CityPups sees an opportunity to help city-dwellers find the perfect dog through local organizations. To help more people find their furever pet, once a user decides to adopt a dog, they are sent to a third-party contact to start the official process. 

My role: UX Designer
 
Research Synthesis | Scope, Persona, Journey, User Cases, Guerrilla Usability Testing
 
Rapid Prototyping | User flows, sketches,
hi-fi prototypes
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Google Ventures Design Sprint - University of South Florida Bootcamp 
 
5 Days - Start to Completion

THE PROBLEM:

THE SOLUTION:

THE MOTIVATION:

Oftentimes it is found that people who live in the city struggle to find the right dog to adopt due to their unique needs and lifestyle. Also, it can be hard to know where to start and what shelter to visit when personal transportation is limited in urban areas. 

An online third-party platform to search and find dogs, as well as get the individual connected with the local shelters and organizations. This will in turn help more people find their perfect FURever pet to enhance city-life dwelling. 

CityPups wants to increase the adoption rate, ensure owners are happier and create better forever homes for dogs. Based on an individual's unique needs, CityPups sees an opportunity to help city-dwellers find the perfect dog through local organizations.

The first portion of the design sprint was to understand the problem to know what solution needed to be created. The modified Google Ventures Design Sprint focused on a new startup company called "CityPups".
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With a mission to help more people find their perfect dog, CityPups wants to increase the adoption rate, ensure owners are happier and create better forever homes for dogs. 

01.

DAY ONE | MAPPING

Persona: Ellie, 27 years old. 
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Ellie lives alone in a studio apartment in NYC. Now that she does not have roommates, she finally feels "ready" for the responsibility, and companionship of a dog.
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She follows some adoption agencies on Instagram, and even "saves" some dogs she wants to adopt. Ellie has spoken to adoption agency representatives to ask questions, which has been helpful, but is very time-consuming to find the right contact or make an appointment.
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Ellie asks friends and people in her building who have dogs for advice, so she can get info from people that are closer to her situation. 

INTERVIEW NOTES

INSIGHTS DISCOVERED

  • The online platform needs to filter by size, breed, good with other dogs/cats/kids, etc for ease of use.
  • When writing the biographies regarding each animal, generic stats make for helpful information (breed, color, size, sex, age, etc.)
  • Users like knowing the story/background information of a dog. A more in-depth description of the dog’s personality, temperament, potty trained, previous tendencies is useful in determining whether it could be a good fit or not. 
  • Each listing should include details that could be red flags to certain users such as the distance and or price of the animal if personal transportation is limited. 
  • Lastly, users want to know more about a dog's energy levels, good with kids, good with other dogs, how many walks are appropriate for the specific animal, as well as wanting to see videos of the dog's personality in real life. 

Affinity mapping helped to identify a possible solution and design for the CityPup online platform. It gave me an oversight view of what steps need to be included for users. ​

The second day of the design sprint consisted of lighting demos to compare similar companies and their website platforms.
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I researched Petfinder, Adopt a Pet, as well as a few others to see how finding a dog through their search engine worked.
This process helped me to identify key similarities and differences that I would later incorporate into my design solution. 

02.

DAY TWO | SKETCHING

Petfinder opens to filters that narrow by pet type, location, or breed-specific searches. It also allows you to filter by how long the pet has been listed on Petfinder.
You can also filter by shelter or rescue by location. 
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Adopt a pet lets you search by pet and by state making the location of where you are adopting clear.
You can also filter by location, age, and breed, or narrow down further by identifying specifics that are important to the individual. 

CRAZY 8'S | INITIAL SKETCHES

The third day was all about creating the first round of wireframes and deciding on the look for the overall design.

This process helped to formalize the solution that was coming together.

03.

DAY THREE | DECIDE

At the wireframing stage, I was still formulating what I wanted the overall look to be for this design sprint project. Several different iterations were formed before landing on the final look. 

On day four I turned the wireframes into my initial phase of prototyping the UI of CityPups. It was a rough sketch of sorts to create a visual starting point. As part of the testing and iterating for my designs, I ended up with a much better end result on day five. 

04.

DAY FOUR | PROTOTYPE

On the fifth day of this design sprint, I presented my prototype to receive feedback from several people. Upon initial viewing, the overall design appearance was a little lacking since it was drafted up quickly in comparison to previous capstone projects. The functionality worked fine and I got good feedback on the flow of it, but I didn’t like how the look was coming together. Following my interviews, I knew I wanted to touch up the aesthetics of it for a more polished experience.
 
While this prototype is more of a bare-bones type product compared to my last capstone project, it was still an interesting challenge to create a MVP to present. With only six screens, I believe it shows the basic concept of the website and it gave the interviewees an idea of what the entire website could look like upon completion. 

05.

DAY FIVE | TESTING

Now with a better UI, the whole experience is more visually appealing and set up for a well designed overall flow.

CLICK TO VIEW ADOBE XD PROTOTYPE