Pawsome
Pawsome is a mobile app concept that is aimed at building a close-knit community of animal caregivers to facilitate communication regarding adoption, rescue, healthcare, events and more.
Context
Self initiated project
Winner of Uxplorer, a competition organized by Yuj Designs, Pune
Timeframe
2 weeks, August 2015
Role
Research and synthesis, conceptualization, information architecture, prototyping, visual design, branding
Tools
Sketch, Illustrator, Invision
Team member
Shivali Babras
The Opportunity
The community of animal caregivers is large in India. These people have a variety of needs and sometimes, struggle to find the appropriate guidance and resources to address these needs. There lies an opportunity in bringing together such people from all over the country so that they can have a robust communication channel and form a stronger community that shares the same goals and interests.
The Solution
A platform that enables communication between animal caregivers to facilitate pet adoption and the exchange of other pet-related information so as to form a well-connected network of people and a shared repository of valuable resources.
Connecting adopters to volunteers
The platform will help potential adopters to search for a pet by allowing them to filter their search by location, age, breed and so on. It will also help social workers who volunteer to care for stray and rescued animals in their neighborhoods to find them suitable homes.
Shared repository of contacts
This section contains the contact information of organizations like pet hostels, hospitals, pet-friendly eateries in the user's city with other useful details like address, timings, and reviews.
Finding a mate
Members can create a profile for their pet and look for a suitable match through the platform, by reviewing the profiles listed by other users on the app.
Building a strong network
The activity feed will help users share information about events like camps and pet-shows, tips for pet-care, relevant news articles, information about new products or services and so on.
The Process
Based on framework by Jesse James Garret
Research and Synthesis
Pet adoption as the initial problem
In spite of the presence of a large community of animal caretakers in India, finding homes for abandoned and rescued animals still remains a challenge.
The lack of a channel to connect those who are willing to adopt and those who are looking for adopters was identified as the initial problem space. To expand on this further, we started putting down our thoughts around pet adoption and some other needs of the large community that strives for animal welfare in the country.
Analysis of the existing channels of adoption
We analyzed the various channels through which people currently adopt and the challenges of each channel to identify opportunity areas.
User Interviews
We interviewed the prospective users of our app and gained some valuable insights from them. Through the interviews, it was discovered that in addition to pet adoption, these users had many other pet-related needs.
Identifying other opportunities
After speaking to multiple users, one of the major design decisions that we took was that our platform would not just facilitate pet adoption, but would address a larger range of issues that concerned our user group.
Design considerations
Bridging the gap
The solution should connect those looking to adopt a pet with those seeking caregivers for abandoned, rescued or stray animals. It should also enable easy communication between both the parties to facilitate a smoother adoption process.
Building a dedicated platform
The solution should serve as a platform dedicated to addressing all pet-related needs like finding a mate, having access to a shared database of relevant contacts and so on.
Forming a close-knit community
The solution should also build a strongly connected community of animal caregivers from all over the country. It should serve as a networking platform and should help them share knowledge with each other, help a caregiver to find a missing pet, be notified about pet-related events in their city etc.
Information architecture
Card sorting
The card sorting exercise helped us understand how our potential users would organize topics into categories that made sense to them. They were also asked to give each category a title. This exercise helped us develop the information architecture.
Click on the image to see details
Low-fidelity wireframes
We tried permutations and combinations of different interaction design patterns to translate the information architecture to wireframes for a mobile device and tested them with our users.
Experience prototyping
We made a quick and dirty working prototype of the app so that we could test it with our users and get feedback early on before we dived into creating the high-fidelity prototype.
Visual Design
Color palette
Pawsome uses peach-coral as its primary color for the top app bar. Mahogany is the secondary color that is used for buttons and for indicating selections. Additionally, the palette also indicative colors green and red to indicate success and failure. Greys are used for typography and inactive elements.
Typography
Pawsome uses Montserrat for its typeface. Montserrat is a sans serif typeface with wide letterforms and many weights. It is a legible and contemporary typeface, with rounded geometric letterforms that give it a warm and friendly character.
Type scale
The type scale used provides the typographic variety necessary for a distinct visual hierarchy in laying out the app content. All items in the type scale use Montserrat as the typeface, including Montserrat Regular, Medium, Semibold and Bold.
Reflection
Given more time, I would think about this offering as a system instead of a standalone product. A backstage process that verifies the credibility of the adopters and caregivers is important to ensure that the platform does not get misused by breeders to gain personal profits by charging adoption fees to adopters. It is also important to keep in mind that changing homes might be an emotionally draining experience for animals and so it should be ensured that the app is not used by irresponsible caretakers to get rid of their pets.