Citypups Design Sprint

CityPups saw an opportunity to help people living in large cities find their perfect dog based on their specific needs. They want to help dogs in shelters find their "forever homes."

The Problem

CityPups is a new startup that wants to make it easier for people living in the city to adopt the perfect dog. Through research and interviews, CityPups has found that people in the city struggle to adopt the perfect dog because of their personal constraints such as the size of their living space, schedule, transportation, access to outdoor spaces, and more.

My Role

I was brought on as a UX/UI designer to help them create a desktop platform that would increase adoption rates, find “forever homes” for dogs in shelters, and have a happier dog owner. I was working alone on this project and used the Google Ventures Design Sprint Process, which is a five day process that allows me to efficiently experiment and solve the problems at hand. Through ideation, design, prototyping, and testing, the end goal was to have a Minimal Viable Product (MVP).

Day 1

Understand The Problem

My focus on the first day is to map out the customers' experience and understand the problems they are having. CityPups provided me with Review Research, User interviews and Personas to get me started with this phase. This information was extremely valuable and would be referenced through every step of the design sprint to make sure every decision is based around the user's needs.

Topics frequently mentioned:

Photos / videos - Nearly every user mentioned that photos and videos are the first thing they take notice of.
Housing Constraints - Most of the reviewers mentioned they have a smaller house / apartment, so they would like to know their dog's size, energy level, if the dog can be left alone for longer periods of time, etc.
Connection - They would like to see in depth bio’s about the animal to see if they have a good “connection” with them.
Basic info - Basic information is always mentioned by the reviewers, but they follow up with questions that also circle back to personality and temperament as well. This shows that the basics are important, but the information is not strong enough on its own.

The user interview and review research showed that most of the users pain points were directly related to either the search filter on the websites or the information given on the dogs profiles.

Below you will see my user persona and map

Day 2

Sketch

Day 2 revolves around solutions. I began with a lightning demo, taking a look at other groups that solve a similar problem or that require similar steps. During this I observed that most sites had a lot of filter options, but they weren't very intuitive and didn’t reflect the priorities of the users we spoke with. Most of these adoption sites focused on dog breeds, even though the people we spoke to talked more about the dogs size, temperament, and personal connection. Based on my previous learning that the filter system was going to be a priority, I examined Airbnb because of their seamless design.

Next I did a Crazy 8’s exercise, which forced me to step outside my comfort zone and come up with out-of-the box solutions. I spent a few minutes each, sketching 8 different versions of a critical page.

Concluding day 2 I selected my favorite sketch, which was the first sketch from my brainstorming exercise. It allowed me to show a large photo of the dog, while also having enough space to show all the basic information. This led to me creating a solution sketch, which is the screen that comes before my critical screen, the critical screen, then the page following that. I did these as wireframes in Figma to begin taking my process from hand-drawn sketches to a mid-fidelity prototype.

Day 3

Decide

Day 3 will consist of creating a storyboard, which is a visual representation of Ellie’s experience with our product. This step allowed me to experiment with the user's journey and the layout of the website as a whole. This was also very important because I wanted to add a messaging system on the website, which I hadn't seen on any other adoption sites, so wireframing was a crucial step for me to start to work out the steps Ellie would take to use that technology.

Ellie would go to the CityPups website, apply her personal constraints and filters, then browse for dogs that match her needs. Once she finds the dog for her, she would send an introduction letter to the adoption agency and make an account, which will then open up an option to message whatever agency she was looking to adopt from. Once they respond they can work out the details of how they would like to proceed.

Storyboard

Day 4

Prototype

Creating a clickable prototype was the goal for day 4. While doing research, I noticed many of the dog adoption sites were cluttered, had too many distractions, and overused their CTA (call to actions) colors. With this in mind I made sure to keep my design clean and simple.

Below you will see a few of the completed prototype pages. Where the user lands and searches, where you would browse for your pup, and the dog's profile.

View all Citypups Screens

Day 5

Usability Testing

I found my participants for the test by using social media and personal connections. These participants reflected our target user; living in a major city and having experience with pet adoption. I recruited 5 participants based off of the research done by the Nielsen Norman Group which shows that 5 is the perfect number to test due to diminishing returns.

I created a list of tasks for our participants to complete, along with a semi-structured script for me to reference throughout the test.

Before the first task, I asked all of my participants to look around the page and make sure they understood any iconography used. Specifically, the heart icon for liking/saving a dog’s profile and the icons under dog photos that show the user what some positive traits about the dog are.

Overall, the biggest change that needed to be implemented to the design was to scale down the imagery and icons. It was a bit large which made it harder to scan the information. Aside from that, the feedback was extremely positive.

Recurring positive comments about test:

Simple and Clean
Intuitive
Short, accurate descriptions are nice “learned a lot with few words”
Appreciation for the search filters and personalized questions
Likes that the icons were more descriptive once visiting the profile page
Appreciation for the messaging and additional inquiry feature
Loves the possibility of videos

Link to the CityPups Prototype

Learnings

Overall I believe this design sprint was a success. It forced me to focus on solutions and move forward without hesitation and create a functional interface to solve the problem at hand. During this process every step had its value, but overall the usability testing proved to be immensely important. Thanks to the research, I was able to give every design decision a purpose while creating the platform, but the testing phase not only proved that the theories and decisions we made were accurate, but it also helped paint a more clear picture for our future decisions as well.

Next steps for Citypups would be to include small additions to the site based off of our user feedback such as: