Dog owners face numerous challenges in balancing their busy lifestyles with their dog's needs, including scheduling adequate time for care and finding opportunities for dogs to socialize.
Key insights from research indicate that dog owners:
To address these challenges, I designed Waggle, a mobile application that connects dog owners with other dog owners and caretakers, providing access to a range of dog care services. Waggle facilitates both practical assistance with dog care needs and opportunities for dog owners to connect and socialize their dogs with other dogs.
The initial problem was defined as follows: connecting dog owners and bringing their dogs together allowing the dogs to develop their social skills and provide mental and physical stimulation.
To gain a deeper understanding of user needs and challenges, I conducted user interviews with the goal to learn more about how we can bring dog owners and their dogs together so that we can design an application that will facilitate this.
Five participants, each owning at least one dog, participated in a series of moderated remote interviews.
Affinity mapping helped to identify overarching themes based upon the data from all interviews and form key insights that helped to shape the project.
The following key insights were identified for this project:
I created these three distinct personas to evaluate design decisions throughout the process, assessing how effectively each design choice helps the persona achieve their goals using the product.
Ideally, I would collaborate with other team members to develop these personas. The personas would serve as a valuable tool for presenting key research findings to the team.
Three problem statements were formulated, each tailored to the specific needs and challenges of the defined personas while aligning with the overall project goals.
The HMWs helped to ideate and come up with features that could solve the problem statements.
The user flows focus on the following must-have features:
These features align with the three problem statements, facilitating connections between dog owners, streamlining pet care management, and creating opportunities for dog socialization, ultimately ensuring dogs' needs are met even during busy periods.
The user flows helped to identify which pages were important to focus on for wireframing and would be necessary for building a functional prototype for usability testing.
I began by sketching low-fidelity wireframes based on the user flows, allowing for initial exploration and concept refinement before transitioning to mid-fidelity wireframes in Figma. This approach helped with the creation of all essential screens for usability testing.
A moderated usability testing session was conducted with 4 participants with the goal of getting to know how the users would navigate between screens so that we can optimize the user flows. Participants were given four tasks to complete using the mid-fidelity wireframe prototype.
The usability test results showed mostly positive feedback. The average scores for each task were relatively high, indicating that users found the app fairly easy to use. All users were able to complete all tasks, although the task requiring participants to accept a service request as a provider exhibited a slightly longer completion time.
The mid-fi wireframes have been transformed to hi-fi by including branding and visuals, but also incorporating the improvements from the usability test.
The calendar page has been redesigned to a home screen, displaying both pending and scheduled services. This consolidated view allows users to switch between services requested for their dog and services they are providing.
I did consider to make two separate interfaces, but I decided to keep both in the same home-screen to stay more true to the first ideas of where a user could ask for a favor and return it.
An orange notification dot appears on the dashboard and within the chat interface to alert the user of new service requests.
Users have the option to initiate a chat with a service provider before requesting a service. Alternatively, users can directly request a service without prior chat interaction, followed by a dedicated screen confirming the successful submission of their request.
An unmoderated usability testing session was conducted with 10 participants. The goal was to get to know how the users would navigate between screens so that we can optimize the user flows. Participants were assigned three tasks to complete using the high-fidelity wireframe prototype.
All participants successfully completed all three tasks, with average ease of use scores indicating high levels of user satisfaction. Two tasks received scores of 4.9 out of 5, while the third task, where participants had to accept a request as a service provider, received a score of 4.3 out of 5. This lower score may be related to the user interface on the home screen, where participants switch between the perspectives of a service requester and a service provider.
Based on the testing results and comments from the participants the following recommendations are made for revision:
Home-screen:
Chat:
A revision based on the insights of the usability test with the focus on the home screen and chat.
User interviews served as invaluable resources for developing well-rounded personas, each with unique goals, motivations, and challenges. The Waggle application is designed to address the specific needs of each persona, whether it's connecting dog owners for socialization opportunities or providing convenient pet care services when time is limited.
Early moderated usability testing with mid-fidelity wireframes proved invaluable in identifying areas for further development and refinement. The testing process led to a significant redesign of the calendar page, transforming it into a central dashboard. This iterative process also necessitated a review and subsequent redesign of the user flows.
The current design allows users to seamlessly transition between the perspectives of a service requester and a service provider within the application. However, an alternative approach could involve developing two distinct interfaces for each user role, potentially enhancing user clarity.
Due to time constraints, the design of user profiles, including features for setting preferences and availability for service providers, and a system for managing credits, was deferred to a future phase. These features are crucial for the application's functionality and will the next step to be able to make the application work.
While this project primarily focused on dog owners, exploring the potential for expanding the platform to accommodate other types of pets would be a valuable consideration for future development, thereby broadening the target audience and increasing the application's overall appeal.
A search feature that allows users to find any video among their saved videos.
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