Project brief

The Challenge has been to create a dog-walking service within 6-weeks to connect dog owners with walkers in consideration on how we can help the dog owners trust their dogs are in safe hands.

Problem statement

Dogs are part of the family and not lightly entrusted to strangers. Our goal for the dog walking app was to create a service people can trust. My high level goal was to build a fast and simple onboarding process where the user can see the value first and then signup to create an account.

User research

At the beginning of the project, we didn’t have a clear mission or specific goals for the dogwalking service. Without pre-existing insights, we did brainstorm at our weekly meeting to get first insights from dog owners in our team. Afterwards, I interviewed 5 people with different backgrounds. I found that no-one would trust their dog to a stranger. Only one dog owner once tried a dogwalker and was not very happy with the experience.

Market research

I did some competitor research and analysis of existing web services. I really liked the “find by zip-code” feature as a first entry, that allows the user to see what they would get from the service. This aligns with my high level goal “value first”. I also found that the competitors use easy onboarding explained in 3 to 4 steps and reviews to build trust.

Persona

In the assignment we had to create three different personas each. The dog-owner, the dog-walker and the dog. I found this was very interesting and helpful to get insights from different perspectives.

User flow

To gain more insights, I re-created the user flow of one of the competitors. (left image) For this project I chose to focus only on the user flow of the dog-owner. (right image)

Wireframes

While sketching the first six onboarding screens, I had to go back to the competitors research to gain more insights on the dog walker’s profile setup and booking page. I would have loved to have more time to flesh out the user’s profile features.

I think the profiles are a good way to build trust by linking them to build friend-circles. Mandatory images taken during walks by the dogwalker are automatically tagged and connected to the dog’s profile and walkers gallery. Reviews from the dog-owners are linked to the dog’s and walker profile. Dog profiles can have friendships to help find matching dog-friends for walks and play dates.

Visual designs

I choose a colourful colour palette to make the app seem friendly and delightful. Using different colours as labels for each service. Inspired by the review shape in the profile screen, I decided to apply it on other screens as well. The search result screen cards can be expanded by gesture from 3 to 1 columns.

Prototype + test

I had three people test the app flow, yet I didn’t get useful insights so far. I optimized the transition time on the login overlay, because it seemed too fast. Overall I think to get real insights the app should be interactive on all screens, this helps the tester to get a more realistic feeling which helps them to give better feedback. View interactive prototype

Outcome / results

I had a lot of fun doing this project, it gave me a lot of insights on where my strengths are and what I still have to learn. Research and analyzing information and information architecture is what interests me the most. I will definely work on expanding my Figma knowledge to work more efficently and I will get into the habit on writing my documentation after each step when the thought process is still fresh.