Pets can be hard to look after

Taking care of your pet can be hard. Especially when theres so much to do. Groomer appointments, medications, weight tracking, food intake. It can be really stressful.

Thats where Petstop comes in

PetStop is your one stop for all your pets needs and wants. Its a mobile-based application for RSPCA that helps pet owners with their pet's health and wellbeing. They can track calorie intake, exercise time and find local pet services as well.

User Goals

After doing all Interviews, Surveys, and creating personas and scenarios, the top three User Goals were written out - these were what I would focus on when designing the app.

Allow users to easily connect to their Vet and communicate with them.

Allow users to find exercise routines that are quick and can be done inside the house.

Allow users to easily create reminders for pet activities and tasks.

Personas

Storyboards and Scenarios

Scenario 1

Jessica arrives back home after her job and is so tired that after giving her cat some food, she immediately jumps into bed, falling asleep quickly. When she wakes up, she realizes that she forgot to give her cat her medicine yesterday, both the morning and the night dose. She calls the veterinary to just check if missing doses was okay, but they inform her that she needs to book an appointment and come in to talk to the vet, unless it was a clear emergency. She doesn't have time to go in because the next few days are filled with assignments and work. Instead, she calls a friend of hers who in her third year of studying to be a vet and asks her if missing two doses would cause any problems. Her friend tells her that since she's not an actual vet, she cant guarantee but missing the doses shouldn't be a problem. Jessica decides to just wait it out but stays stressed throughout the whole day. Not only that, she's also disappointed with herself for forgetting both of the doses.

Scenario 2

Storms friend has trusted her to look after her two guinea pigs. It's a week before her friend leaves and Storm is stressing. She decides to do some research online by herself. The search results help a little with what the should eat and how they should stay active, however doesn't give any specifics for how much should be fed, at what time, how many times, how long they should be active etc. Its all very vague. Storm also considers it important to know what to do in an emergency situation. She finds it hard to find information about signs and symptoms to look out for when caring for guinea pigs and even harder to find a list of contacts for an emergency. She finally decided to call her friend and ask her for her vets number and and any other contacts that she had.

Full User Research

Features

Home View

The home view allows the user to view their pets main information and see any upcoming events or activities. If they multiple pets, the can swipe through them to access each. They can also add on any actvities for the day that they have.

Exercise Page

In the exercise page, the user can browse how active the pet has been, add workouts, track the pets weight and check personalized workouts that pets can do.

Meal Tracking

On this page, the user can log meals in to track calorie intake and browse foods that are dangerous for the pet. Along with this, they can also browse recipes or order healthy pet food.

Services

The services page allows users to easily find veterinary, grooming and pet sitting services, personalised for each pet.

Figma Document

Why Petstop?

The design solution was informed by thorough research into different pets and their needs, and multiple rounds of user testing and interviewing with pet owners. User groups (families who owned pets (Teenagers and Adults), Adults who owned pets and University Students. ) revealed some key pain points, and features that were important to them such as a pet sitter finder and a reminder/task features. UX Principles were also utilised to create a design that would appeal to users and be easily used. The user goals were all addressed to make sure that users would be able to achieve them easily.

Features related to User Goals

Users can find exercise routines that are quick and can be done inside the house = Exercise routines and ideas for both inside and outside can be found on the “Exercise” Page.

Users can easily have reminders for pets activities and tasks = Reminder Notifications can be added for pet activities and tasks so that users never forget anything important.

Users can easily connect to their vet or another emergency contact = Users can easily book an appointment with the vet, and if the pet accidentally eats something dangerous, a number has been included to call.

Full Case Study

User Testing

There were various screens in the app where different designs could be used and one could be more effective. I decided to use A/B testing to find out what screens and styles the user tends to prefer. From all the choices, I chose the ones that most users preferred.

Reflection

While designing this app, I learned a lot about how vital user research is for the designing of an app. As someone who has never taken care of a pet before, I virtually had no insight into the users' minds. Through research, interviews, and surveys, I was able to empathise with the users and understand their problems to create a design that would helpful for them genuinely. I'm happy with the app, but it could have been taken further with the use of gamification and customisation. Regardless, the process itself was very illuminating and taught me how being well-informed is essential to creating a fulfilling user experience.

RSPCA PetStop