TheraPet
Therapy Pet booking responsive website
DesignLab UIUX 2021
Overview
During Covid 19 we realised how many people were suffering from mental health problems while going through the pandemic. I noticed people were binging on dog videos because, for a brief moment of time, they made them happy.
I came across a video by Yes Theory in which they adopt a dog for 11 days. But they had to give up because of their lifestyle. I then realised that many are going through the same problem where people want to adopt a pet but aren’t able to do so because either they aren’t ready yet to commit to it or its due to financial constraints.
That’s how this idea was born, a product that connects people with therapy dogs owned by others.
Role
Sole Product Designer
Design, Research and Product business analysis with stake holder engagement studies
Timeline
4 weeks
September 2021
Platform
Responsive Website
Disclaimer: TheraPet is a fictitious product. The project presented at UCLA Accelerate by a UCLA MBA student
The Project
COVID-19 has gave rise to anxiety and depression in individuals. We were seeing a rise in dog ownership and work from home work culture, which makes it evident it will be beneficial for dog owners as well as people who cannot own pets themselves to decompress and relax .
Individuals with anxiety or mental health problems can volunteer to walk a service dog or an emotional support animal which benefits the dog owners and benefits anxiety patients with the help of play dates.
User Experience
Understand user flows, build wireframes and create a prototype to understand user experience.
Research and UI
SME Research on what Therapy with pets entails, explored UI design, created imagery and illustrations for the same, found ways to help expand the business by catering the product to two significant stakeholders who could benefit from this
Business model and Pitch
This project was developed with and MBA student applying for UCLA accelerate. As part of the submission a business plan as well as a complete product with enough supporting research along with it had to be turned in
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Studies have shown that people who are going through mental health problems have issues accessing Therapy Dogs.
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The Process
The Responsive website might offer services that include but are not limited to just connecting therapy pets but also allow them to realise the opportunities to adopt in the future.
*The MVP’s scope was refined based on user research and project road map during the project development
Discovery
Top- Line Initiative 🛑
Decrease anxiety and depression in individuals by providing dog therapy services via play dates and allowing users to create a social network to help them be part of future dog events and other pet related social activities
The website allows them to search for the pet they wish to have a therapy session with, it allows them to view all details about it and additionally creates a relationship for Pet owners with other pet sitters out there
Top- Line Measurement Goal
Improve mental health via safety sentiment amongst therapy seeking patients in markets TheraPet will launch in
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Potential Therapy pet networks created
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Increase CSAT
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May allow these TheraPet users to see potential in adoption eventually
The pet therapy product will allow users to research for the kind of pet therapy they are looking for, make a bookings with busy people leading a professional career by highlighting info on the pets and offering a clear calendar for appointments online. Effectiveness will be judged thru surveys.
Marketing Objective
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Mental health Care- needers: Offer peace of mind for new customers by providing emotional support and service pets to play with to reduce anxiety. They can attend pet events in the future over the weekends at neighbourhood pet parks or 1:1 play dates.
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Pet Owners: Offer services for pet owners to occupy their pet during their busy schedule.
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Understand pain points, frustrations, needs and wants and draw up an affinity map when done
Project Scope
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Understand: Who the audience is - are we just connecting users or are we allowing them to also learn about this form of therapy, understand what the need of these users are
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Engage: provide them access to clientele using users GPS location
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Unique: Target Audience 20-40 looking for quick pet therapy sessions to decompress and relax
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Educate: Educate users about pet therapy and allow users to learn of benefits and maybe adopt in the future
Marketplace Research 📱🔎
Nearly 600k patients seek therapy using mental health apps. We can potentially capture a market to capture a % of these patients who are comfortable seeking therapy by playing with dogs and other animals.
After a few hours going through reports, product reviews, and endless scrolling through websites and app store, we’ve learnt two things:
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Pet care services are not new. There are many apps and websites around the world where you can buy and sell services for pet (dog walking, dog boarding, pet sitting) but the concept is still relatively new
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However, most of the apps act as a platform to connect pet owners with pet sitters, but the process of choosing the right pet sitter can be quite tedious and time-consuming.
User Interview
Primary - Existing customers of mental health problems who will sign up from Lyra and Modern Health
Secondary - Potential customers who are willing to seek alternative treatment by signing up through TheraPet
• Hear from users firsthand stories of how they use the service and what role it plays in their lives.
• Contextual inquiry via zoom, to see how people are use existing services
• Find a solution that they would like as a feature for information and news consumption.
• Understand what they need in-order to better their hunt for mental relief.
I wanted to learn about how stress co relates with petting a dog or any other pet so i conducted a survey online which was completed by 34 participants
• People who have pets but no means to always watch them
• People who love pets and find sense of mental relief with pets but dont have a capacity to own a pet
Key Insights
As a result of all the research from Competitor analysis and user studies, I drew out some key insights to help narrow my area of focus and features to solve for.
There is no current service like this
👉 Create a product to help PO post , look for PS (looking for Therapy Pets) and get to know them before booking.
Many options but also no option
👉 Allow PS to take the pet when unavailable to be cared for by the owner but at the same time allow PS to filter by available times and needs for pet therapy.
“We don’t text anymore”- says users
👉 Recommend PS looking for therapy by geo-based auto-matching.
Not enough information to validate PO
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Develop a validating system for POs (comprehensive background check, police check) and communicate it clearly.
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Enrich POs’ profile page: photos, reviews, experience, etc.
Stressed pet is a No-No
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Provide a feature to help PS stay connected with PO.
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Provide a way to reward PO with ratings for their good response rate.
Define
Journey Map
Prior to feature brainstorming, I wanted to find ways to curate an improved journey map for both users of this product.
The next step was to put the knowledge from research in motion to define the products functions, user flows and help design the prototype
A journey map helped resolved how best to solve problems for both the Pet owner and the Pet sitter.
Pet Owner
Pet Sitter-
User in need of Pet Therapy
Persona 🕵🏻
I had interviewed several types of people so far: those who love pets and those who have their own favourite pets at home. The interviews were in Q/A style. I asked them about the difficulties that come while owning and taking care of pets, what does please them most and in general what does their daily life looks like.
Based on the answers two types of User persona are revealed: One that owns a pet already and one that doesn’t but is looking to spend time with pets—both the Pet owner and the Pet sitter.
Building an app that connects people with Therapy pets and in turn connects Pet owners to potential pet sitters.
Ideation
Conducted a How might we design strategy technique to help narrow the features that would help resolve focused target problems.
Feature Prioritisation💡
Based on interviews and general market research, I was able to identify a list of potential features.
The next step was to put the knowledge from research in motion to define the app’s functions, user flows, and design the prototype.
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Search for therapy dogs
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Explore available therapy dogs
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Request a therapy dog
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Account
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Request history
After I had my concept and direction selected, I began the task flow phase. I kicked off this phase with a timed design sprint using pen and paper to draw possible ways that the product could flow first. After pitching my ideas I used dot voting on the best components I would include, and planned to begin wire-framing and rapid prototyping different options.
Task flow
Find a way to have a sitter but also help society with relief from stress and depression by lending your pet dog on the days you are busy and unable to care for your pet.
Find a way to get access to a pet who is a great joy to lift spirits and comfortable around new people while their owners are away or busy.
I decided to find a way to create a User Flow that would cover this task flow for a Therapy Pet seeker using the Lo Fi wireframe exercise following this
User Flow 🗺
Creating a User Story Map helped to build the structure for the product. My main challenge was to simplify the number of steps needed for each user to complete their key tasks within the product.
Low-Fi Wireframes 💭✏️
As part of my Lo fi wire frames I used the dot method to narrow down what layout best worked. I ran 3 iterations to narrow it to this one. I ran tests at this stage to flush out any interaction issue I was running into to help refine my hi fid prototype to test with.
Using the Task flow I decided to resolve and build forward the flow for the Pet therapy seeker first. The assumption I made at this stage was it would be a similar if not identical flow for the Pet sitter seeker as well.
Brand UI Kit 🚀
Unlike wireframes and prototypes, developing a brand UI kit is what shows the look and feel for the future project. This is also a good way to experiment with colour palettes, fonts, and style that resonate with teh overall vibe of this concept.
Its also important to note at this stage I conducted some guerrilla tests to see what icons would be redundant. The test results also help me learn what would best work moving forward.
Prototype
Hi Fid Interfaces
It was then time to apply all that new branding and UI elements to the mid fi wireframes. The UI gives an element of clean, instructional, straightforward and clear content as well as high res imagery to define the news itself. I was mindful to find ways to simplify the product to the bare minimum to help the tool be successful.
These frames represent the most updated version of the site prior to the 2nd round of usability tests I conducted usability test the prototype.
Below after the prototype testing you will see the iterations that was done to edit and improve the user flow through the product
Home Page
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The home screen allows the user to get an over view of both the pet sitter search as well as the pet therapy search.
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Additionally it gives you a peek into what is trending out there in terms of top pet sitters and top pets available for pet therapy
Curate
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Step 0: Book TheraPet
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Step 1: Decide the type of Pet
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Step 2: When and Where
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Step 3: Things you may need
List of available pets
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Here you get to look at all the pets that meet your requirements you just curated
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Additionally it shows you the pets which are trending and popular
Booking page
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Allows you to fill in your account info
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Confirm all booking details
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Proceed to book
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At this point you wait for the Pet owner to confirm the meet and greet with his pet- once he or she confirms you will have your appointment confirmed within the upcoming appointments.
I used a version of this prototype to test with users and gain insight on what was not working.
The full prototype can be accessed here.
Prototype 🚀
Usability testing results
For the most part since I went about testing my wireframes rigorously I managed to pick up lots of bugs and problems from the users early on in the study- this allowed the hi fid phase to run more smoothly
Apart from a few issues that was picked up in wire frame the users found the flow itself to be very straightforward and simple to get through - this was a major win for us
Summary
Liked most
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simplicity in UI
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memorable iconography
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illustrations are sound
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ability to curate your list of available pets
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making the booking process straight up simple
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ability to alter your choices right until the end
Liked least
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Overly large bubbles on the spread
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Drop shadows
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button legibility for the white vs black on the orange buttons
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What does others category mean in the pet things curation step
I faced the challenge of creating an engaging app both from the user experience & visual perspective. But it is rewarding to find a product that can satisfy two opposite user groups and cater to both equally
Next steps 💭
It would be to create a hi fid prototype for the Pet Owners seeking pet sitters. For the most part this flow is the exact same and the only difference would be to remove the first curating screen since the pet is known incase of the Pet owner
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We refined the categories to better align with user needs - removed the lease illustration - this was redundant since you wont get a dog without a leash
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Second we removed all unnecessary drop shadows and large bubbles that were disturbing the users flow and was nothing more than a distraction
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Thirdly altered all the buttons that were hard to read with a White text on the orange to help users
Conclusion Summary
What I learnt
When we first started this project, figuring out how the concept works was very stressful. We dont want it to only cater to therapy needs and not only fun, but also to exercise our design thinking mind, so it’s stressful to make sense of it, and in turn, make people understand it at a glance. In the beginning, the idea seemed very normal: the product provides a list of therapy pets or pet sitters, then you browse and select. However, we soon found out the model was not only old but also tiring because to be fair, how many apps have been using this concept? MANY. Then BOOM, the auto-matching / curate your list feature was born. It’s certainly not something brand new, but as tedious endless clicking, reading and choosing from many profiles can be, we hope the new concept can ease up the pain.
What I wish I had done
If we’re being honest, in our final design, we were not able to cover all of our design ideas. Nonetheless, we would want to explore some of those ideas in our next update:
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Response rate: Admit it, we don’t want to send out a message and only receive the “not confirmed” receipt without any response. We want all of our pet sitters/ pet owners on the platform to be more responsive, that’s why we’d like to introduce response rate to assess their activeness on our platform. Having this helps TheraPet control the quality of our pet sitters as well as informing pet owners on how serious the pet sitter is.
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Badges: Badge systems is another idea that we want to integrate into our system to reward pet sitters and pet owners. The more badges they gained, the more popular they become, and also, be exposed to more jobs. This idea is also to make our platform fun and more engaging.