CityPups

Project Description:

I love telling stories. I recently obtained my Masters in Journalism in May of 2023. My thesis paper was on the stray animal population in Houston. It’s one of the biggest issues surrounding the city I live in that people don’t want to talk about. A problem we have here is a lot of organizations and nonprofits vying for attention and resources. We don’t have a city-based organization that acts like a hub for all things adoption for stray animals. The city itself has BARC, the one big animal rescue organization. To help elevate the stray animal population, CityPups will be working with all shelters that register and will help animals be placed in homes inside the City of Houston. I want to note that this was a GV modified Case Study.

My Role

UX and UI Designer

•

Researcher

•

Interviewer

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UX and UI Designer • Researcher • Interviewer •

Day 1: Understand and Map

  • CityPups is a new startup that wants to help people living in cities find the perfect dog to adopt. They’ve brought you on board to run a design sprint to quickly test out a possible solution.

  • Potential pet owners' first move is to find a shelter that has open adoptions. You can first start by searching Google to find a shelter or ask someone you may know if they recommend any shelters near the area. The process seems to be the same for all instances I looked at. There’s some paperwork that goes into the adoption process and most shelters need to see you in person before the approval process goes through.

Day 2: Competitors and Sketch

Houston SPCA

BARC:

Houston Humane Society:

Pet Finder:

Best Friends:

Adopt a Pet:

Get Your Pet:

A lot of pet adoption websites are organizations that need donations and contributions to keep their business open. A lot are non-profit organizations that also take volunteers to help run and work events. Organizations also put a lot of emphasis on pet education, so you can find a lot of educational material on these websites. These organizations are not strictly just for adoptions. They want to prioritize taking care of animals and making sure these animals are treated well.

— Insights

Sketches:

Crazy Eights:

Insights:

There needs to be a lot of options for pet adoption. Potential adopters want as much information as possible to make the best decision for themselves. Size, breed, color, temperament all matter to potential owners and it’s a life altering commitment so having all the information they need is crucial.

Solution Screens:

Insights:

I wanted to go with this as my crucial screen because potential pet adopters want as much information as possible about what pet they’re looking to adopt; information ranging from breed, size, temperament, color, age and more. The process goes from one screen full of pets with a brief synopsis of the pet, kind of like an elevator pitch then going to the crucial screen and finally ending with a page where the potential adopter fills out information regarding themselves.

Day 3: Decide

Insights:

AdoptaPet was one of the national sites that very well put together, or at least their home page. The hero images looked very clean and the search for pets at the center of the page was eye-catching, so I wanted to emulate that. As for the other pages, I wanted to create individual pages for potential pets up for adoption to give each animal a special place on the website. As for the other pages, there needed to be a few pages that were necessities like applications and personal information for the user, an About Us page to share the story of CityPups and put faces to the people running the organization. Donation and volunteering is a vital part in animal welfare so a donation and volunteer page was a must-include. I wanted to keep the message clear and keep it clean and simple.

Day 4: Prototype:

  • Home

  • Adopt

  • Registration Information

  • Education

  • Get Involved

  • About

  • Profile

The pets are the most-important stakeholder for CityPups. Initially, the problem we wanted to solve was to create something where people in the city can have access to their perfect dog. That user is still a top priority but after studying, having the pets up-and-center, it created a much friendlier website and made the website more friendly and warm. It only seemed right to go in that direction and coupling that with colors and fonts that feel inviting, it all came together quickly.

— Insights

Day 5: Learnings

Creating something that combined my love of writing, pets, and design was very satisfying. I got to use my knowledge of stray animal population to help the community positively. I loved running a design sprint that allowed me not to overthink and design for a problem space.