Ready Set Pet
Pet adoption app that matches pets with their adopters
[Role] Product designer, Concept creation
Product definition, 2018
Pet adoption app that aims to find adopters the right fit by matching the pet to their lifestyle, in a fun-dating app like way. The use case was created as a self exercise project.
Problem Statement
Millions of animals are currently in shelters and foster homes awaiting adoption.
Millions of animals are currently in shelters and foster homes awaiting adoption.
There is a need in connecting people who are looking for a new pet with the right companion for them. In addition, an adopter requires guidance to find a pet which matches their lifestyle, considering factors such as breed, gender, age, temperament, and health status.
Research
First step was to understand the contextual sphere - The world of pet adoption.
(Adoption process resources: Wiki - general, Adoption guide by HomeoAnima, Adoption guide by Adopt a Pet Com and personal experience).
First step was to understand the contextual sphere - The world of pet adoption.
As a two time cat adopter, the adoption process is no stranger to me. This, with cross information from reading about adoption processes beyond Israel, brought me to the realization that the adoption process has broadly similar steps all across that may differ in some appearances.
Furthermore, I’ve explored the product world of pet adoption and discovered variuos existing apps.
(Adoption process resources: Wiki - general, Adoption guide by HomeoAnima, Adoption guide by Adopt a Pet Com and personal experience).Second step was to understand who is my persona.
(Persona research resources: Adopters community, Commenters in an adoption community, Statistics on adopters, Adopters profiling and personal experience).
Research Insights
Product definition takeawaysMost adopter’s pet choices are driven by appearance, rather than lifestyle and personality compatability.
Design takeaways
Many existing apps use the dating apps swiping experience, which is a sucessful model.
Persona takeaways
People are willing to spend the time on someone else, meaning to invest energy in the matching process. People with various lifestyles require different pet personalities.
Product definition takeaways
Most adopter’s pet choices are driven by appearance, rather than lifestyle and personality compatability.
The adoption process involves a fair amount of bureaucracy and stages, which is a potential pain point.
Design takeaways
Many existing apps use the dating apps swiping experience, which is a sucessful model.
The image is the center of the experience, this promotes appearance driven selection.
Filters are based on options of appearance or physical traits, and the location is a describing parameter experience only.
Persona takeaways
People are willing to spend the time on someone else, meaning to invest energy in the matching process. People with various lifestyles require different pet personalities.
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Setting up Goals
- Find the right fit for both sides - enable and guide the adopter to choose the most suitable pet for their lifestyle and not only by appearance preferences, to ensure adoption sucess rate.
- Excite about the adoption process - create an experience that will excite to act vs. the common action motivation in the adoption world which is empathy and pity.
- Motivate to follow all steps up until adoption - guide the adopter through the adoption process to prepare her/him for the actual steps, while maintaining the experience as simple and fluid as possible.
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Definition Process
The adoption mapping flow guided me in conceptualizing the foundations of the app flow and experience pillars.
Leading factors in the experience were matching the right animal to the adopter (browse), simplifying the initial steps of the adoption process (questionnaire), and providing easy first contact with the shelter/foster while minimizing the preliminary pain points (questionnaire + first contact).
Flow and Interaction
Once the high level flow and experience pillars were defined, I layouted the specific interactions and the navigation.
(Click here to see the entire flow and pages of the app)
Visual Design
The animal adoption world is usually full of sad stories and low quality pictures of animals in captivity or in poor condition.
The animal adoption world is usually full of sad stories and low quality pictures of animals in captivity or in poor condition.
For the visual experience I wanted the app to be visualy attractive, light and fun so that users would want to explore further and stick around. Motivate from a positive place of happiness instead of pity.
My insparations were computer games and the Nyan cat.
