Pawmates
CLICKABLE
PROTOTYPE
***All images can be clicked to zoom
Proto Persona
The pet adoption process can be a very daunting task. So many options of dogs to choose from, the uncertainty if they’ll mesh well into your lifestyle, and numerous other aspects. When in reality, adopting a dog shouldn’t be a difficult task. It should be exciting and full of joy to add a furry member to your household. My teammates and I set out to develop an app that streamlines the adoption process and makes it fun for everyone involved.
Pawmates is an app that allows you to take a lifestyle quiz and gives you tailored matches of dogs that will fit well in your family. So often, people will go into the adoption process thinking they know exactly what they want, but in reality, be looking for the totally wrong dog. They may think they want a high-energy pet but don’t want to run with them every day. Or they assume they only want a big dog but a small dog ends up capturing their hearts. Petmates does all of this work for you. It asks you about yourself, and shows you exactly what kind of pet you truly need.
To begin the process, we created a Proto-Persona based on what we already knew about the potential users that would use this app, since we had all adopted dogs before. We then wrote up a survey to find out what types of things other people look for while “shopping” for pets. We gathered 75 responses and got a lot of great, useful information. We also conducted one-on-one interviews with 6 more people to gain additional in-depth data. From this data, we were able to create a better-fit User Persona of Pawmates’ potential users.
Once we compiled all of the insights from our answers, we began organizing it into an Affinity Diagram based on similarities. This helped us visualize what was most important to people when they’re looking to adopt. From that information, we were able to do a Feature Prioritization Matrix and decide what aspects and which features were the most essential for us and for the users to have. This gave us a full-picture of the user needs and from that, we composed our Problem Statement, UX Hypothesis, and Value Proposition Statement. We also organized our Information Architecture and developed our User Journey Map for the typical user path through our app.
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Affinity Diagram
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Then came the sketching and wireframing process. My three teammates and I all sketched mockups out what we envisioned our apps to look like while following our user path. From those sketches, we took the buttons, positioning, and features that aligned with our data and worked well aesthetically and created wireframes. Once that was complete, we began user testing.
Through user testing our lo-fi prototype, we took those insights and developed our mid-fidelity prototype. Then we tested again, ideating and gathering more insights. We wanted our hi-fidelity clickable prototype to flow perfectly and be easy to use for everyone. Our A/B testing came next, where we tested whether it was more intuitive to swipe left/right on the pet matches or to press a button to “like” or “pass” on an animal. Our users took highly to the button prototype so that is what we developed into our app.
Sketches
Once the aesthetics were all chosen, we designed our UI Style Guide, tested for accessibility, and began developing our app. So far, we have mocked up 3 pages for our app that are clickable. As a team with very new front end development skills, we were very proud of this accomplishment. It was no easy task, but we did it!
Our hopes for Pawmates is that it will help new pet parents find the animals that truly fit their lifestyle and needs. Using open-source data, our next steps are developing the remaining pages of the app and securing funding. This cause is one that is very dear to my heart, having two rescue dogs myself, and I hope that it will aid others in finding the furry friend that they need.
Style Guide
Final Prototype Screens
