Happy Pet App

After spending more than five years working in the pet industry at a family-owned pet store, I noticed that many people lacked the information they needed to provide the best nutrition they could to their furry friends. It wasn’t their fault— they were inundated with ads from the most famous (and lowest quality) brands whose only goal was to sell more product, not to educate their customers. If they educated their customers, those customers would realize the products they were buying from those big name brands weren’t any good!

However, when I spent time one-on-one with customers and explained why the best brands were so much better nutritionally, the majority of shoppers chose to purchase better foods. This kind of information is empowering, and when I set out to develop a specialized mobile app for a subscription pet food vendor, I knew I wanted to put the user in control of the information they received about a brand so they wouldn’t be deceived about the quality of their purchase.

Overview

The Problem

Pet owners struggle to find quality, affordable foods and products for their pet that are in-stock and available when they need them.

The Goal

To develop a pet food subscription app that allows users to compare foods by quality and price and set up orders so they always have the products they need when they need them.

Research- Empathizing with Users

I conducted interviews with four pet owners to gather an understanding of the problems they face. A primary user group identified through my research was working adults with pets who struggle to find the products they need in stock and at an affordable price. A secondary audience has presented itself as pet owners whose pets have special dietary needs who struggle to find quality foods that meet their pets’ needs.
After developing user personas to better understand the people I am designed for, I created user journey maps to track how an interaction with my app my go. Early in my research, my focus was primarily on the education aspect in the form of pets with special dietary needs. In working outward from considering accessibility of unique pet foods, I was able to target educating all pet owners on nutrition rather than just pet owners whose pets required a specific diet.
In order to get a clearer idea of my competition, I completed site audits for three direct and indirect competitors. From that report, I gained valuable insights into not only their successes and failures, but also the gaps in their offerings. This allowed me to develop unique concepts to this industry, such as a way to compare pet foods side-by-side to see a breakdown of their ingredients.

User journey map focused on pets with special dietary needs

Pain Points

“Cost can be a challenge and getting a food that is both healthy and helpful for [my] dog that has an illness.”

— Participant

1.

Food and products being out of stock.

2.

Balancing cost and quality of products.

3.

Finding quality foods for special dietary needs.

Ideating

As I began the process of sketching, I iterated several possible layouts per screen before selecting the most user-friendly elements to include in the refined sketches. For example, the home page starts by sectioning products into categories based on the type of pet so that users can quickly and easily find the products they are looking for.

Lo-fi Prototype

Once I was happy with my sketches, I digitized them and started the process of prototyping. The focus of this low fidelity prototype is to demonstrate the ability to find pet foods, compare them against each other, and purchase the selected product.

Usability Testing

With the digital wireframes in place, it was time to start usability testing. With my research plan in hand, I rounded up 5 participant for each round of testing. Round one utilized the low-fi prototypes.

Round two of testing utilized high-fi mockups that looked very close to the final app design.

Usability Study Findings

Round 1

Users are able to navigate the app quickly and with ease
Users want an easier way to compare foods
Users want more functionality in the prototype

Round 2.

Users were pleased by how easy the app was to use
Users struggling to find which links were clickable white completing tasks
Users liked the layout and design of the app

Final Product

Check out the live prototype here.

Take Aways

Impact:

This app makes ordering pet food easy for users of all ages.

“I would love to order my food from there because it was like (snaps) 1, 2, 3!"
-user, 57 years old

"I really really like how with the compare, it pulled it up on half the screen for one thing and half the screen for the other. I think that really makes it very easy to work with there. I really like it."
-user, 23 years old

What I learned:

While designing the Happy Pet app, I learned how to develop research plans and usability studies. Those components helped me stay organized build a more intuitive app.

This was also my first time using Figma, which was an exciting experience in and of itself. I’m excited to learn more about Figma’s features and capabilities.

Next Steps

1.

In this app, I focused heavily on creating the ability to compare foods. Diving deeper into the app, I’d love to develop a tool within the compare function that allows you to select ingredients and have a definition pop up, or have some sort of guided exploration to teach people how to read an ingredient panel and what to look out for.

2.

As I developed this app, I began to focus more on a general education of nutrition rather than focusing on pets with specific dietary needs. To further flesh out this design, I would love to go back in and add foods for specific health conditions and include why it is used for those conditions on the product page.

3.

Conduct user research to find more areas in which to serve my target audience, pet owners aged 18-65 who work 30+ hours a week.