Woof - Dog Walking App Case Study
Build an enjoyable dog walking lifestyle to make your dog healthy and happy.
My Responsibilities
User Research, User Design, Interaction Design,
Information Architecture, Visual Design.
Challenge
Dog parents feel unmotivated to walk their dogs every day especially when they are busy at work. Hiring dog walkers is a common solution, but they feel expansive to hire dog walkers and feel unsafe letting strangers come into their house. Lack of exercise has led to behavior problems and health problems in dogs.
How might we provide a secure and inexpensive way for busy dog parents to ensure their dogs have enough exercise?
Background Research
The goal of secondary research or background research was to identify the existing problems of dog walking, the importance of daily exercise for dogs, and the relationship between dog parents and dogs. I conducted literature reviews.
Why dog walking?
Solve behavioral problems.
Maintain physical and mental health.
Why do people want their dogs to walk?
Believe walking keeps their dogs healthy.
Having high social support from the community to walking.
Research Goal
The goal of the research was to identify and understand the existing problems that stop dog parents from having daily exercise with their dogs. The research revealed that dog parents see their daily dog walking as a task for their dogs to go to the bathroom, and do not understand the importance of dog walking
to their dogs' mental health. That suggested an opportunity for introducing enjoyable dog walking experiences.
User Interview
The goal of the user interview was to collect more data from dog parents. I talked to 7 dog parents (age 20-40) living in my neighborhood and found two major problems they are facing related to dog walking.
Walking their dogs more than twice a day is not realistic. People are not often motivated to walk their dogs every day. but they still try to walk them at least once a day.
The majority of the people are working professionals and it is hard for them to attend to their dogs and are looking for reliable, trustworthy dog walkers to whom they can entrust their dogs.
Competitive Analysis
I analyzed digital pet services to identify the gaps in the current global market. Rover and Wag! are the two biggest pet services providers, dog parents can pay someone to take care of their dogs. Tractive is a walk tracker that dog parents can track their dog walking activities.
User Persona
I created a user persona that helped me to better understand who is my target audience and allowed me to think from their perspectives while designing.
Ideation
The idea behind this design was to build a community that makes the dog walking experience safer, more fun, and more interactive.
Low-fi Wireframes
Before embarking on preliminary user testing and high fidelity mockups, I brainstormed on potential UI designs, illustrating wireframes to get a feel for the app and its core features.
Wireframe and MidFi User Testing
For the second round of testing, I created digital wireframe. The goal was to get feedback on the refined concept and test out specific functionality and user flow.
User Flow Map
I created a user flow map in order to evaluate and optimize the user experience of daily dog walk.
Wireframe and MidFi User Testing
For the second round of testing, I created digital wireframe. The goal was to get feedback on the refined concept and test out specific functionality and user flow.
I tested the flow on 4 users
According to Feedback
I added a social media sharing option to increase the interactivity and fun level of dog parents.
I studied Rover’s, Uber’s, and Instacart's background check processes to find the fine line between privacy and security.
HiFi Iterations
I went through another two rounds of user testing with high fidelity prototypes and created 3 iterations. The goal was to get feedback on app usability and make sure the visual elements were meeting WCAG standards.
Introducing Woof
Woof motivates dog parents to exercise their dogs every day by providing monitoring, challenges, and inviting people to a like community.
Visual Design Guideline
Reflection
Opportunity:
The walk tracker’s information can potentially be synced with other apps or devices like Fitbit, and Fitbark.
All the information can be shared with other social platforms. The ability of cross-platform share will allow dog parents to share their happy moments and successes of challenges with their dogs to other friends and family.
Reflection as a Designer:
As a designer, I tried to help dogs and dog parents build closer bonds in real life through the design.
The purpose of Woof is to motivate dog parents to exercise their dogs every day in order to help dogs stay healthy and happy, at the same time, create bonds and have a healthier lifestyle.
