Yang Sun

Problem Statement

Pet overpopulation is a serious problem. Animal shelters become overcrowded and are unable to care for the millions of homeless pets in the United States. Sadly, not enough people adopt their pets from shelters to help ease the crowding. In many cases, homeless animals often live a sad, lonely, hard life out in the streets trying to survive on their own.

Design Question

How to find a home for the pet from the shelter?

Research

Approximately 7.6 million companion animals enter animal shelters nationwide every year.

3.4 million - are cats
3.9 million - are dogs

Approximately 2.7 milliondogs and cats are killed every year.

Only 1/10 dogs born will find a permanent home.

Competitor Analysis

Functionality

Be able to search and discover pet.
User can chose basic filter to pick pet.
App has own community edit and share.

Usability

Easy to use filter to search.
Notification reminds you new pet add.
Image pan effect can not see the whole image.
Originaed information, user friendly.

Simplicity

Easy to get started wothout signup.
Navigation is not concise.
Can not save liked pet in the pet list.

Functionality

Some search filter are not provided.
Location function does not work.
Limited number on the favorites list.
Won’t let you select both gender.

Usability

Navigation system can be more user friendly.
Results do not match search.
Not allow more than one size/age/breed.
Flashing an error message.

Simplicity

Navigation has too much info.
Home page is easy to check pet photos.
No personal profile page.

Persona

Goals

Adopt a dog or a cat.
Support non-profit animal oganization
Helpthe homeless pets.

Frustrations

Lack of inofrmation.
Has a small room, can only have one pet.
long wait list in local shelter.

Persona Pain Points Summary

Starting with the interview with my user and my own experience that adopt a pet from a shelter have some main points I learned from this research:

Pet could have a health problem that is unforeseen.
There is a long waiting period to adopt at a shelter.
Older users not used to using a mobile app.
Don't have much choice in the local shelter.

So, based on there pain points, I start to creat different user flows for different user experience.

Solution

I firmly believe that every pet will find a pet owner who loves them. At this moment, people may not know every single pet in the shelter all over the country. All the shelters need a digital bridge to connect the pet and pet lovers directly. Rapid and complete integration of pets from shelter information for more people to see can greatly increase the adoption rate.

Role

Timeline

Type

Tools Used