FIND YOUR. - Page Work In Progress
Make new furry friends, fetch new adventures.
Find Your. is an app that can alleviate both parties’ (dog walkers & dog owners) concerns by establishing a platform that surrounds the idea of sharing experiences, implementing key social features and visual designs that can help users to get informed of each other much more easily and efficiently than ever before.
Make new furry friends and fetch new adventures with Find Your. - the social network for dogs and their humans.
Course & Instructor
California College of the Arts
(Interaction Design)
IxD Foundation
Professor Jon Chan
Tools
Figma
Procreate
Mural
Skills
User Interface Designing
Prototyping & Wireframing
Storyboarding
User Flow Diagramming
User Journey Mapping
Usability Testing
Project Timeline
September 2022 – November 2022 (6 weeks)
Problem
Many dog owners struggle to find trustworthy and reliable dog walkers who can provide their pets with the care and attention they need. At the same time, dog walkers often find it difficult to socialize with their peers and feel connected to their job. This creates a problem for both parties: dog owners are left worried about the safety and well-being of their pets, while dog walkers may feel isolated and disconnected from their work.
How might we create an app that addresses the concerns of dog owners regarding the safety and well-being of their pets while also providing dog walkers with a platform to socialize and connect with their job, thereby creating a mutually beneficial experience for both parties?
This project aims to solve these issues by creating a platform that allows dog owners to easily find and vet reliable dog walkers and enables dog walkers to connect with their peers and showcase their experience and credentials in a subtle manner. By doing so, creating a mutually beneficial and engaging experience for both dog owners and dog walkers.
Startup
Find Your. starts with a collage of features on the home screen, presented in large blocks with matching visual representations.
Setup & Map View
As a Dog Walker, there is no better place to start than the Finder.
After the setup phase, the walker would be met with the Finder map view, where nearby dog walkers, facilities and pet-related special events are being displayed.
The walker can adjust filters in order to adjust the visibility of certain information at will.
Finding Walker & Booking a Walk
Clicking on one of the walkers’ map markers would bring the user to their profile page. Besides location, this page also displays their basic information, recently received comments and Memories received during past walks.
By chatting, profile matching and checking the walker’s available time, the dog owner could then schedule a walk of their dog with them.
Memory Request
When a walk is in progress, the owner can send a Memory Request at any time. This is designed as a subtle way of communicating with the walker for an update of their dog’s status.
Upon request, the walker will be prompted to send back a quick photo or video of the dog walking progress, making this mutual understanding more frictionless than ever.
Walk Completion
When a walk is completed, the owner can rate and write a review about the walk. They can also review the Memory(s) recorded during the walk. They can either help with the owner’s evaluation of the walker, or can also be posted into the Memories ecosystem(more on that later).
Switching to Walker Mode & Searching for a Dog Owner
During this Flow, we are switching to the walker’s role briefly, the interface change up in terms of its theming and catering features.
Memories
Memories is the central feature of Find Your. It is a photo and video sharing social platform where users can upload photos or videos of memorable recent experiences during their time with matched pets and share them publicly. They can also view, comment and like posts shared by people nearby. Events that are going on near the user’s home would also be shown here.
Filters in Memories can be used to collapse unwanted into.
Viewing a Recent Memory & Posting In Memories
The crucial feature that makes the Find Your. social ecosystem is the ability to re-access past Memory Requests from the Recent tab. By visiting there, both the walker and the owner would be able to edit and post to Memories from those Memory Requests. Posting in Memories becomes a simple, encouraging and mutually beneficial experience.
The Memories, alongside with the reviews and ratings, helps owners to know the walkers’ personalities beforehand, thus building trust and reliability between the two parties.
Research
User Journey Mapping
User Research
User Archetypes
Framing the Problem
Ideating the Solution
Design Brief
Job-To-Be-Dones
Storyboards
Constructing & Testing Prototypes
Refining the Design with User Feedbacks
Reflection
Case Study Contents
Research
The research phase of this project utilizes the findings gathered from user interviews to form user archetypes and user journey maps separately for the two different parties the app is designed for. They highlight the pain points of the users’ experiences in terms of dog walking and sets up for the solution.
User Journey Mapping
Universal Research Questions
How often do you walk your dog?
At what time of day would you usually go out to walk your dog?
How long does it take you to walk your dog everyday?
Where do you often go to walk your dog? How far away from home would you go?
Why or why not would you seek for other people to walk your dog?
Do you have any particular concerns with having other people potentially walking your dog?
Would you be happy to help another person walk their dog? Why or why not?
If you are looking for someone to walk your dogs/that has a dog that needs to be walked, what features would you want to implement?
(Participants generally reacted to those underlined questions with more insights and concerns)
User Archetypes
As Dog Owner
Needs to walk their dog everyday but feels tired after work
Owns two dogs, loves them and would want them to be accompanied and walked everyday despite being stressed
———————
Would worry about pet’s safety if handed to other people
Wants to get updated with how dogs are doing very frequently
As Dog Walker
Has a job that ends quite early
Faithful dog lover, is super happy to walk dogs for other people
Likes using social media to share daily lives
———————
Find self-introducing to dog owners unnecessarily lengthy and difficult
Don’t like most dog walking services’ dated and web-oriented designs, would want a relatively more lightweight app design to use more enjoyably
As Dog Owner
Hard to know if the walker will be responsible, takes a lot of conversational effort to confirm the walker’s reliability
Would not know the pet’s situations in real-time
As Dog Walker
Takes a lot of effort to introduce themselves to the owner
Wants to make sure that the walks are done within safe activity areas
Research Findings
Ideating the Solution
As research was being conducted, the goal becomes clear: Designing an app that can alleviate both parties’ concerns by establishing a platform that surrounds the idea of sharing experiences, implementing key social features and visual designs that can help users to get informed of each other much more easily and efficiently than before.
Thinking about what would help the users in alleviating those pain points, I wrote down multiple Job-To-Be-Dones and drew a storyboard to portray what the ideal solution could do to help the users.
Job-To-Be-Dones - Past Version
Storyboard - Past Version
As Dog Owner
When I want my dog to be walked, but I do not have the optimal schedule to practice this essential activity everyday, help me to quickly find reliable dog walkers during my workdays, so I can balance life between my work and my pet.
As Dog Walker
When I want to help others to walk their dogs during my free time, but I do not know the platform that I can easily do so, help me by offering me a trustworthy platform to know and help out dog owners, so I can accomplish my goal and make new friends.
Job-To-Be-Dones - Final Version
As Dog Owner
I want my dog to be walked, but I do not know for sure if the walker would be responsible, help me to quickly find reliable dog walkers, so I can comfortably let the walker handle my pet.
I want to know about my dog’s real-time situation, but contacting the walker too frequently could be awkward, help me to establish a passive way to let me know about my dog when they’re with a walker, so it feels less intrusive to us both.
As Dog Walker
I want to help others to walk their dogs during my free time, but I do not know the platform that I can easily do so, help me by offering me a trustworthy platform to know and help out dog owners, so I can accomplish my goal and make new friends.
I want to participate in pet-related events near my home, but I do not know where can I learn about them, help me to make finding nearby events simpler so I don’t have to search for them manually every time.
Storyboard - Final Version
Constructing & Testing the Prototype
No groundbreaking new social platform wouldn’t need early adopters, including Find Your. This makes the interface catering to younger audiences crucial. Find Your. aims to utilize striking and colorful design themes to modernize the experience for the users, making them feel comfortable and right at home when navigating through the different sections of the app. This was being actively worked on with the help of concepts, mid-fidelity prototypes, and usertesting feedback.
Constructing the Prototype - Iterations
Learnings & Room For Improvements
Font Choices and typography consistency
Use(or to limit the use) of color palettes
Consistency of visual elements on the screen and information hierarchy
Signifying interactive elements on the screen
Testing the Prototype - User Testing & Feedback
Constructing the Prototype - Home Screen
Reflection
Find Your. is a design project that put a strong emphasis on visual presentation and user journeys. The extensive research phase lays strong foundational understanding for the development of the high fidelity Figma prototype that I built to conveying my ideas for this interconnected social experience.
What I am the most happy with in this project is its interface design. I wanted the use experience of Find Your. to be fluid, enjoyable, and highly informative as I was designing. Those goals are being achieved through the usage of strong, vivid colors, satisfying transitional animations, and the hierarchy of information presented in each of the screens. In my tests, the users responded very well to this aspect of the prototype.
What I feel that wasn’t as strong during the making of the project was the development process of the Figma prototype. This project was my first time using Figma as a prototyping tool, meaning that I had to learn on the fly as I developed the features of the prototype. This made the constructing process of the project unnecessarily complex and incredibly time consuming.
Fortunately, I have gathered foundational knowledge of building a Figma-based prototype during the making of this project, paving the way for more efficient prototyping as I continue my journey as an interaction designer.