Fetch
During the 2020 pandemic, pet ownership in the U.S. rose from 67% of households to an all-time high of 70%. Fetch is a mobile app aimed at busy professionals who need to find pet care services on-demand.
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Timeline: 4-week design sprint
Role: UX Researcher & UI Designer
Approach: User Interviews, Affinity Map, Persona, User Journey
Tools: Figma, Illustrator
Photography: Adobe Stock Images
Challenge
Help frustrated pet owners to streamline the overwhelming search process of finding pet care services.
Goals
To create a more simplified and quicker search experience that is geared towards finding pet care and to implement an intuitive search filtering solution will that help pet owners find trustworthy businesses and feel confident that their pets are in good hands.
4 Phases of My Process
01 Research 🔎
Planning, User Interviews, Affinity Mapping
02 Analyze 🧠
Personas, Journey Map, Problem Statement, Proposed Solution
03 Design 🖌
Userflows, Concept Sketches, Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
04 Deliver 📱
Prototype 1.0, Usability Test Results
01 Research 🔎
Planning
When I began my research, I browsed for existing pet care services and the two popular ones I found were Rover & Wag. These two were mainly used for services such as dog walking, boarding, training and drop-in visits. Regardless of my preliminary research, I planned to interview pet owners about the challenges they faced when finding pet care.
User Interviews
I interviewed 4 participants in the ages of 30-35 years old. Most of them are employed and lead busy lives.
Some interview questions I asked
What pet care services are you using at the moment or have used in the past?
What are some of the challenges you've faced when finding pet care, if any?
How do you search for pet care services?
Notable Quotes 💬
Affinity Mapping
To further synthesize the information, I used an affinity map to gather and group some trends from my interviews. Of the six themes that came out of this method, I developed my solution around the four highlighted categories below—search process, safety, convenience, and challenges. Below shows the insights from the two users that stood out from the group.
User Insights
They either use Yelp or Google to search
Users search for the nearest locations first before exploring other options
Trust is a big factor for pet owners—they will ask a friend or a family member first before considering pet care services
02 Analyze 🧠
Persona
To help analyze the data and empathize with the users, I created a persona.
DOG MOM
Renée Gonzales, 36 yrs
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Renée is 36 years old and single. She became a dog mom during the pandemic. She loves to travel and wants to take her dog with her as much as she can. She needs to rely on finding nearby daycares when she can’t bring him to certain places. One day she was invited to an out-of-town wedding and she brought her dog along. She uses Google to search what’s around her. She is inundated by the results and she knows it will take her a long time to decide which daycare to go with.
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Location: White Plains, NY
Degree: BFA SUNY New Paltz
Job: Creative Lead, Accenture
Status: Single
Income: $120,000 -
• Quickly find reliable pet care services when she’s on the go
• Get all the important information before making an appointment
• Feel confident that she’s leaving her pup at a trusted facility
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• Find trusted pet care services when she can’t care for her dog
• Overwhelmed with search results
• Difficult to trust the facilities she found from just looking at the website
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“I must keep multiple tabs open and call every single place.”
— Renée Gonzales, Dog Mom
Journey Map
I developed a journey map to understand and track Renée’s needs and pain points. I’ve highlighted the main problems that I would like to address as I developed my design solutions. In the lowest point of her journey, she is overwhelmed by the search results and displeased because she did not have time to call every place.
Problem Statement
Pet owners need to quickly find reliable pet care services at the last minute when they are unable to care for them. They need to know that they can leave their pets at a trusted pet facility to make them feel at ease.
Proposed Solution ←
Pet owners need Fetch—an app that can help them search for available pet care services and be able to quickly find all the important information they are looking for before making an appointment. Since pet owners want to find top-quality care, the app will only generate results that are vetted by credible dog trainers, pet sitters, groomers and registered veterinarians.
03 Design 🖌
Userflows
When it came to the design stage, I explored 3 potential userflows—search, filter by and create a profile userflows. I focused on the most important one which is the Search. To gain some inspiration, I looked at existing search engine apps, including the ones that were mentioned during the interviews.
Concept Sketches
I sketched out a few concepts for the app and took inspiration from the most commonly used search engines. Since being able to search instantly was a prioritized feature for this app, it starts as the home screen. If the user prefers not to type in the search, they can also tap the quick searches that brings them to the results page where they can further sort by location, distance, reviews etc. The business page will include all the important information such as the company website, phone number & location at first glance. I also sketched out a pet profiles page where the user can save favorite pet care services for each individual pet.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
I moved into digitizing my concepts in Figma and added a few more screens to be able to do usability tests.
Usability Test Results
Observations
All 3 users were able to search quickly
After the first two tasks 1 user didn’t get the affordance that the results page was “scrollable”.
2 users got stuck on clicking a result to get more info and wishes to see a screen afterwards since it wasn’t designed yet
All 3 users were able to filter out the results when asked to search by distance
Feedback
“Damn, it looks like a real app!”
“The results page had a false bottom.”
“ I want to see the number of results.”
“Creating a pet profile was super easy.”
“The plus icon to add a pet could be at the top of the page because that’s where I normally look.”
04 Deliver 📱
I incorporated the feedback from my usability test and created a high-fidelity prototype to simulate the experience.
Quick Search
Users don’t need to create an account to be able to search. They can easily select the pet service category, such as “Daycare”, on the home screen.
Sort By
A sort by feature was necessary to speed up the search process. Users can then filter by availability, distance, rating or price.
Quick Actions
From the results page, the users can select quick actions such as call, launch site, open map directions or save favorites.
Favorites List
A Favorites list page was designed for a quicker access to most liked searches. The users must have a Fetch account in order to use this feature.
Next Steps 📌
Timeframe | 1 week ⏱
Test my high-fidelity prototype with 3-5 participants to validate my new design decisions.
Timeframe | 1 week ⏱
Finish building the pet profiles page so that users can add their favorite searches for each pet.
Timeframe | 2 weeks ⏱
Do more research on how the vetting process can be improved for pet care facilities.
Reflection
As my very first UX case study, I was given the opportunity to exercise some fundamental knowledge and incorporate it in a way that gave meaning and purpose to finding pet care. I think the overall concept of the app was successful and much needed for pet owners who are being sent back to the office.
The users met the standard metrics of being able to search right away, however, due to the limited time we were given, I couldn’t fully explore the vetting process of reputable pet care companies. I learned never to validate my designs with my own assumptions, since I’m a pet parent myself. Research is crucial because it is always backed by data that will inform my design decisions.