“I have to leave tomorrow.

Can you please keep my dog for 3 days?”

This is the phrase I asked to all my contacts when my company told me I had to leave for a 3 days workshop.

I started to look at the phone waiting for someone to answer.

Same this summer when I had to go on vacation.

Who can keep my dog Ponyo for 8 days?

Always stressfull.

Thanks to Dribble, I attended their Product Design course, where I was able to develop the idea of a Dog Boarding service with the Design Process approach

The Problem

Who can keep my dog when I travel?

The main goal is to help people find a person or facility that can take care of their dog while they are on vacation

User Research

I interviewed 10 people from different ages: 25 to 50 years old.

Everyone has or has had a dog.

No one has ever used a Dog Boarding application.

When they have to travel they rely on relatives or friends, but it is not always easy to find someone who can keep their dog.

The word of mouth is the main common strategy to find dog boardings.

The most common pain point is the trust, it is not easy to leave their dog to an unknown person

Have you ever used a Dog Boarding service?

"No, I used connections from word of mouth"

- Andrew

Market Research

I based my research on my area: northern Italy.

The main competitor is Rover. Rover offers various services including Dog Boarding but it is not "vertical" on Dog Boarding.

There are not other real competitors, there are some ways to find dog boardings like Google searches, Facebook groups or dog-specialized websites.

What I found interesting in this research is that there are no services with the core business based on dog boarding.

User Persona

Based on the research and the interviews, I created a User Persona.

It helps me emphatize with the key audience that will use the app.

The purpose was to get a reliable and realistic representation of the users

User Flow

The first important decision I took was when to login.

I personally don't love apps that ask you to login in order to use the service.

So, I preferred to get a nice and clean experience rather than collect data from the user with a login or sign up page.

Keep it simple!

I tried to keep everything smooth and easy from the Search page to the Checkout page.

With a couple of tap the users are able to book a house for their dog.

Wireframe

From the user-flow I started building wireframes.

Iteration was key.

I jumped from the user-flow to the wireframe, then jumped back to correct something that was wrong. Visualizing the app with a low-fidelity wireframe helps me to understand and ideate some features like Extra Activities (user can choose one or more Extra Activities for his dog during the staying)

Visual Design

I started with colors and typography. A light red as primary and a black as secondary color. I tried to create something easy to manage and to scale.

Then I started building a small design system.

Components and variants came easily using Figma

Then I applied visual designs to the wireframes with some basic rules:

Some visuals of the app

Prototype

Last step of the process was prototyping.

I built a prototype and prepared some usability test in order to get some feedbacks and gather information from users.

Outcome/Results

This main goal of this project wat to learn the process of creating a digital product.

Iterate each step to understand its meaning and value.

It has been challenging and mind-blowing

Thanks Dribble for this opportunity.