PELP
A mobile application for dog-friendly businesses, locations, and services.
Timeline
August 2024 - August 2024; 2 Weeks
My Role
Overview
The idea behind PELP stems from my personal experience and conversation with other dog owners. While there are available resources to find dog-friendly locations or businesses, the challenge is finding a tool or resource that is cohesive and convenient.
Problem
Even if various resources currently exist for dog owners, many of them are not cohesive and convenient. With a need for such an experience the question of how we can create a solution that seamlessly fits into a dog owner’s lifestyle and creates value for user.
Objective
For this project I confirmed the need for an original product I had in mind and utilized data from the research to create an end-to-end product as a solo designer.
Design a mobile application that gives dog owners a cohesive and convenient resource to access comprehensive information on dog-friendly businesses and locations
Design a tool that can seamlessly fit into user’s and their dog’s every day life.
Researching the Space and Users
Research Goals
-Understand the needs dog owners and their motivations.
-Identify dog owner pain points and frustrations when trying to find dog-friendly businesses or locations.
-Identify expectations users would have for an application like PELP.
-Identify the current competition.
-Validate and and confirm the need for an application like PELP.
What’s the Situation?
In order to identify opportunities for a product like PELP, I analyzed the competition. I decided to research two direct (BringFido & DogPack) and one indirect competitors (Yelp). And after analyzing 3 products, I came up with these findings:
-Creating a dedicated product similar to Yelp that provides a comprehensive and enjoyable user experience for users
-Creating a product that provides accurate information to dog owners who want to find and potentially bring business to pet friendly locations.
-Some experiences either overwhelm their users with too much while others underwhelm them with too little information.
User Interviews
“How do you usually try to find businesses or locations that are pet friendly”? In order to understand the question, I conducted 5 remote interviews to gain more insight into their experiences. Primarily, I was interested to learn about:
=How they would normally try to find businesses that are pet-friendly.
=The tools or resources they would use to conduct such research.
-The challenges they face trying to conduct the research.
A challenge that I encountered during the interview was participant recruitment. Eventually, I was able to find participants thanks to the participants who were dog owners contacting other fellow dog owners. And thanks to the interviews, 4 key insights were developed from the data:
Which Do I Use?
Users would use social media, other review sites, and word of mouth to find dog-friendly businesses.
More Alternative Use?
Users use Google as their main method of discovering and researching businesses. But an issue with that is that users also dealt with information inconsistency.
Cohesive Experience
The need for a singular experience that provides a comprehensive experience that is easy to use in order to find the information they are looking for.
Complicated Experience
The need for an experience similar to Yelp would be attractive to users due to how comprehensive Yelp is as a resource.
“I think this app could help me find good places for me to bring my dog with me. I would bring my dog out to places more often if I had an app like this, and I would feel less bad about leaving my dog at home alone all the time.” -J
Getting to Know the Users
In order to dive more into the data and get a better understanding of the potential users that I would be developing for, I focused on creating visual representations that would help me get a better idea of the product.
Creating Personas
Based on the insights that I was able to gather from my interviews and insights, I created two personas that described two types of users. “Luke” describes a beginner user while “Chris” describes an experienced one. Since PELP needed to be an inclusive product, I focused on the “Luke” persona.
This is the primary persona that I used to develop the design of PELP.
The second persona I developed would be considered after fulfilling the first persona, “Luke”.
Point of View (POV) & How Might We (HMW) Statements
After developing both personas and storyboards, I created two sets of POV and HMW statements to get an idea of the ways I can solve pain points users currently face and how PELP can remedy them.
-POV Statement #1: I’d like to explore ways to give pet owners a dedicated and focused resource where they can find dog-friendly businesses/locations, connect with other users, and share their experiences.
-HMW Statement #1: How might we create a solution that seamlessly fits into a dog owner’s lifestyle and creates value for users?
-POV Statement #2: I’d like to explore ways to give dog owners an opportunity to share their experiences with other fellow dog owners on PELP.
-HMW Statement #2: How might we design a rating/review system that allows for dog owners to share their experiences in an intuitive and convenient way?
Feature Set
From the data collected, I settled on a list of features PELP must have but, due to time limitations, I chose to prioritize features like the “Search Bar and Filter”, “Business/Location Information”, and others. Some features listed under “Must-Have”, if given the opportunity, would be considered to be implemented.
Design and Prototype
With an understanding of the journey that users would take, the users themselves, and the priority features that PELP should have, I began designing the experience by keeping three main capabilities in mind:
-Exploring dog-friendly businesses/locations
-Selecting a specific dog-friendly business/location
-Writing a review on business/location.
PELP SiteMap & Flows
Based on the research insights, I identified certain tasks that users may be completing when using PELP and created the sitemap while keeping in mind the ideal journey a user would have using the product.
This initial sitemap assisted me in the creation of the layout of PELP. Over time, the layout got updated as the feature placement got settled.
After defining the feature roadmap and site map, I created the following flows for the main tasks:
-Task Flow #1: Researching a Business/Location
-Task Flow #2: Writing a Review on a Restaurant.
Wireframes & Iterations
The first versions of the wireframes gave me the opportunity to test the early designs with usability tests to discover any pain points my testers would note. The version below is the Mid-Fi wireframe that I used for testing. After successful testing, participants commented:
-To have enjoyed the straightforward and accessible layout of the application.
-Expressed liking the amount of information presented to them in a simple and modern way.
UI KIT
A challenge of this project was to create a whole UI kit from scratch that properly represents the values and design of PELP. The application is intended to be a lifestyle app that anyone can use quickly with little to no distractions.
Final Hi-Fi Prototype & Test
Reflection
After the development of PELP, I came up with a few takeaways:
-Simplicity is the best policy. With so many different ways to design and fulfill user needs, sometimes the most fancy option may not always be the best option. Sometimes going with the tried and true gets the job done and keeps users happy.
-Staying true to my design philosophy. Inspiration comes from many different places, but sometimes it can lead you astray from one’s values as a designer. Knowing how to adapt those inspirations into my values is a skill that is needed to design how you want to design.
-Utilizing already existing tools. Knowing how to create components is an important skill that any designer needs to know but time is not always an ally. With time constraints, designing from scratch may not be the best option. Especially if there are already existing patterns that users have been comfortable and familiar with for years.
PELP is but a potential solution for dog owners who are trying to find a lifestyle app that can fit and provide value to their lives. I believe that keeping the needs of those user in mind will allow for progress to be made for that next app to takeoff and be what PELP tries to represent.