TEAM
Xiaochen Hou, Xuefei Qi, YuaTong Gan, Yue Liang, Wensu Wang, Jincheng Wang
MY ROLE
User Research
UX Design
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Interface Design
TOOL
Adobe XD, Photoshop, Illustrator
DURATION
12 Weeks
Background
What is 'Lost Paws'?
'Lost Paws' is a pet adoption app designed to find loving homes for strays and combat biases against animals with physical imperfections. Using cartoon-style visuals and focusing on personal stories, the app connects pet enthusiasts with adoption centres and foster caregivers, shifting focus from appearance to character.
Through 'Lost Paws', we hope to encourage more people to participate in the rescue and adoption of stray animals.
Painpoints
What is the Problem?
Nowadays, the increasing number of stray animals become a social problem in China. Although there are animal shelters and individual rescuers working on adopting stray pets, their resources and assistance are limited compared with the millions of stray animals. For the majority of animal shelters or individual rescuers, they lack communication with public. Also, many people have prejudice about stray pets that they are unhealthy and unappealing.
The user
Who is the User?
Our application targets two main user groups: pet lovers and adoption shelters. The primary using scenarios for the app involve looking for adoption or finding adopters. An organizer from an animal shelter highlighted that the app could enhance their online promotion efforts, as traditional offline methods have limited reach. Thus, the app is expected to help them connect with more people and offer opportunities to participate in other activities.
Solution
Final Prototype
Based on positive feedback on the features in our initial prototype, we've consolidated these into a final multi-functional platform. It primarily includes searching for adoptable stray animals, finding potential adopters, reporting injured street animals in emergencies, and real-time social networking.
research phrase
Interviews with stakeholders
After deciding on "Rescue of Stray Pets" as our project theme, we discussed the main stakeholder groups closely associated with this topic, including pet foster organizations, animal clinics, pet owners (including adopters), and shelters (rescuers). We interviewed a total of six respondents from these four groups.
Through posing both open-ended and closed questions during the interviews, we gained a preliminary understanding of each group's attitudes towards stray pets, their concerns, and potential personal differences within the groups.
Rich Picture
Based on our interviews, we created a Rich Picture to deeply understand the needs and potential conflicts of various stakeholders. Although adopting pets is seen as a positive action, most people prefer to choose "beautiful" or purebred animals, which leads to many stray or sick animals still being homeless. Especially in rural and remote area shelters, they face a shortage of resources, including volunteers, funds, donations, and partners. Therefore, our app should aim to help these shelters spread information and encourage people to adopt stray animals.
Personas, Storyboards & Photo Scenarios
To understand our potential users’ needs and behaviors, we created six personas representing various user types such as stray animal rescuers, shelter workers, and adopters. We detailed their backgrounds and motivations and developed scenarios for each, depicting their interactions with our app through storyboards and photo scenarios. This method ensures our app's features and user flows meet diverse user expectations.
First prototypes
Explore scenarios & features
Based on two objectives, we designed four app prototypes, each tailored to different needs and challenges within these areas. Specifically, one prototype is dedicated to helping adopters gain knowledge about pet health, another focuses on sharing stories and daily experiences about adopting stray animals, a third is aimed at posting information about stray animals, and the last prototype offers a function to retrieve real-time information about animal adoption centers or shelters.
